LOOKING ABOVE : AN URDU POEM

   

The tongue must beg Thee for the power of speech.

For silence has its way to catch Thy ear.

In days of gloom the stricken cry to Thee

For Thine the lamp faint in the morning light,

Thine the despondent autumn flower.

Wondorous and colourful for the sight what man endures

Thy work the henna-ed  feet of death,

in blood of lovers, dipped

Aside from spell cast by the prayer that's granted,

Thou givest piquency to cry of pain

And lamentation becomes music for Thy ear.

Meadow on meadow lush within

The mirror of desire is Thine.

And hope lost in delight of gardens yet to be

Our worship is a veil, Thou dost adore Thyself

For Thine the suppliant forehead. Thine

The threshold where it rests

Rescourceful in excuses.

Mercy lies in wait to bring us near to Thee;

To thee we owe fulfilment and the pain

of trials endured,

sad and beyond belief

Asad  should be as in a magic cage confined,

When grace of movement, garden, morning breeze

Are Thine to give.

More thrilling than wild dreams of pastures green

Is resignation to the will of God:

His are the fields thirsting for rain and His

The carefree rain -clouds floating gracefully away

Prostrate as suppliant of prostration proud.

Submitting to God's will and yet arraying

Claims to His Favour -impudence, coceit.

How long, O God, this begging for fulfillment of desire?

Grant me the grace to raise my hands aloft in prayer. 

 This was a  English translation  of a poem written by Mirza Asadullah Khan Galib  in Urdu. LOOKING ABOVE is the title of the poem. He was outstanding among Urdu poets.

Galib may well claim to be the culminating point of an intellectual, aesthetic and ideologically integrative development which is of great significance in the cultural history of India.

Because of its character and history, teh poetic tradition evolved its own symbol. The most basic of these was love.

Galib imbibed the whole of poetic tradition and its symbolism as a part of his education and felt no desire for aesthetic or literary adventures that would take him away from it.

Nature did not impose any Galib's moods. He had an urban mind and he could regard nature as a background of human life.

Galib did not discover man, but he invested him with a new insight into his own nature and the nature of life, with a passion for intellectual adventure and  a courage to reject with a confidant and meaningful smile or sheer disgust, conditions of existence which encroached upon his freedom and dignity.

(This blogpost is a part of BlogChatter's Half-Marathon 2023)