Come, for connected with you are the memories of beauty

Which had made the heart an abode of fairies,

In the memory of which we had forgotten the world.

We thought time a fiction of time.

.

Those paths on which her intoxicated youth 

Performed an act of kindness know your footsteps,

Paths on which pass caravans of that beauty

Whose worship was done by these, my eyes.

.

Those darling breezes in which remain 

The faded perfume of her dress has played with you.

The moon’s glory is also shed upon you from that roof

Where the throbbing pain of bygone nights remains.

.

You’ve seen that forehead, those cheeks, those lips

Contemplating which we’ve squandered life.

Those magician-eyes with their lost look have also touched you.

You know why we’ve wasted away a lifetime.

.

We share the gifts of the sorrow of love—

So many gifts that if I count, I couldn’t finish.

What have we lost in that love? What have we learned?

If I try to explain to someone else other than you, I cannot.

.

We’ve learned meekness; we have learned to support the poor;

We’ve learned the meaning of fear and grief, of sorrow and pain;

We’ve learned to understand the troubles of the oppressed;

We’ve learned the meaning of cold sighs and of pale faces.

.

Whenever those helpless ones whose tears well up and dry out

Sit and cry,

The falcons come, circling, wings spread,

To snatch away the alms of the weak.

.

Whenever the worker’s flesh is sold in the market,

The blood of the poor flows in the streets;

Something like fire bubbles up again and again in the chest.

Don’t ask what it is.

I don’t even have control of my heart.

.

From: Naqsh-i faryādī (Image of the Supplicant). Dihlī: Urdū Ghar, 1941. pp. 69 – 72

Raqīb se! is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970