My love, do not ask me for my former kind of love.

I thought that if you existed, life was resplendent;

If I cared for you, then why quarrel about the sorrows of the world;

From your face, springs manifest a firmness in the world.

Except for your eyes, what remains in the world?

If I were to win you, then fate would be defied.

It was not this way; I only hoped it would be.

There are other sorrows in the world besides love;

Other comforts than the comfort of union;

Dark, brutal phantasmagorias of countless centuries

Woven in silk, satin, and brocade;

Bodies sold in narrow streets and bazaars,

Spattered in mud, blood-spattered,

Bodies coming out of the oven of disease,

Flowing pus from running sores.

The glance still turns back to those sights—what am I to do?

Yet your beauty is alluring—what am I to do?

There are other sorrows in the world besides love,

Other rests than the rest of union.

My love, do not ask me for my former kind of love.

.

From: Naqsh-i faryādī (Image of the Supplicant). Dihlī: Urdū Ghar, 1941. pp. 91 – 96

Mujh se pahlī si muḥabbat merī maḥbūb nah māng  is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970