Tahir Ghani

 
THE CAPTURED GAZELLE

The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri

Translated from the Persian by
Mufti Mudasir Farooqi and Nusrat Bazaz
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 Contents

About the Author

A Note On the Translation

A Note On the Transliteration

Introduction

Ghazals

Quatrains (Rubā ‘iyāt)

Winter’s Tale (Manavī Shitā’iyah)

Footnote

Introduction

Notes

Acknowledgements

Follow Penguin

Copyright Page

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 THE CAPTURED GAZELLE
MUHAMMAD TAHIR GHANI (d. 1669), better known as Ghani
Kashmiri, is arguably the greatest Persian poet of Kashmir
and one of its literary and cultural icons. Highly popular in
India and the larger Persian-speaking world up to the
modern times, he in uenced many generations of Persian
and Urdu poets in India. Ghani’s forte lies in his remarkable
use of language to create poems with multiple layers of
meaning. This, along with his versatility in creating
delightful metaphors and images, makes him one of the few
medieval poets with a striking appeal to the modern reader.

MUFTI MUDASIR FAROOQI was born and raised in Srinagar.

He has published on literary theory, postmodernism and
Indo-Persian poetry. He is senior assistant professor in the
Department of English, University of Kashmir.

NUSRAT BAZAZ is associate professor in the Department of

English, University of Kashmir, where she teaches American
poetry and ction.
 A Note On the Translation

Translating poetry is generally understood to be a di cult

task. Perhaps the most di cult challenge facing any
translator is to render in translation the subtleties and
multivalence of the original which the poet has deliberately
cultivated and which account for its richness and beauty. In
the strict sense, translating poetry may be well-nigh
impossible but it is nonetheless necessary. Once, arguing in
favour of the possibility of translation, Goethe had remarked
that the essence of poetry lies in that which is preserved
when it is translated into prose. Formal properties such as
rhyme and rhythm are undoubtedly a great part of the
pleasure that poetry provides, but the element by which
poetry becomes poetry rst and foremost—and which is
de nitely translatable—is the image or metaphor.
Ghani strikes us as a master craftsman of the poetic image.
The translators have, therefore, tried to remain as faithful as
possible to the content and imagery of the original. At the
same time, they have also been fully aware that the worst
sin in translating poetry is dullness. Steering a middle course
between an overly literal and a very free rendering has thus
been the guiding principle in this work.
A word also needs to be said about the selections made
from the available corpus of Ghani’s poetry. Here the aim
has been to present before the readers what, in the view of
the translators, is the best in Ghani. Consequently, only a
few ghazals have been translated in full, a decision taken
due to their conviction that each sher, or verse, in a ghazal is
a small poem, a self-contained unit of meaning related to
other verses only by virtue of the formal features of metre
and rhyme. So, omitting one or more verses from a ghazal in
no way hampers the enjoyment of others. Besides this,
leaving out some verses has sometimes been due to the fact
that they simply defy any adequate translation.
A noticeable aspect of Ghani’s divan, or collection, is an
unusually large number of solitary verses. The present work,
therefore, features a good number of them. In addition to
these, some rubaa‘iyaat, or quatrains, and one of the two
masnavis describing Kashmir’s winter have also been
included. A masnavi is a narrative poem of inde nite length
written in internally rhyming lines. The verses in this
volume follow the same sequence as the Persian divan.
The transliteration of the original Persian, on the facing
pages, is not a standard one, but will certainly help those
who can read Persian and also those who wish to get the feel
of the original on the phonetic level.
 A Note On the Transliteration

The apostrophe (’) has been used for hamza as in shitā’iyah

and the opening quotation mark (‘) has been deployed for
ain as in rubā‘iyāt. The diacritical mark of a bar above
vowels indicates long vowels, such as in zabān for zabaan,
khushkī for khushkee and ūfān for toofaan. Di erent
symbols have been used for di erent letters with similar but
non-identical sounds in the Persian alphabet, as below.
t for tey as in tangī
ṭ for toi as in ṭabīb
ṣ for sey as in ṣamar
s for seen as in sāmān
ś for saud as in śaid
ĥ or hai as in ĥalqah
h for hey as in hamīshah
kh for khai as in kharāb
ż for zaal as in ma‘żur
z for zey as in zāhid
ẑ for zaud as in maẑbūt
ź for zoi as in źāhir
gh for ghain as in Ghanī
g for gaaf as in magar
q for qaaf as in qālīn
k for keef as in kitāb
j for jeem as in junūn
ĵ for zhey as in miĵgān
 Introduction

GHANI: LIFE AND RECEPTION

Mulla Muhammad Tahir Ghani, popularly known as Ghani
Kashmiri, is one of the foremost poets of the Persian
language in the Indian subcontinent and probably the most
popular of all the Persian poets of Kashmir. Although many
aspects of Ghani’s life remain obscure and sources di er
concerning the year of his birth, it may be said that he was
born sometime in the early seventeenth century, probably in
the rst decade, in the old city of Srinagar, and lived mostly
as a recluse, never attending any royal court in Kashmir or
elsewhere. He belonged to a well-known Ashai family in
Srinagar, who were immigrants from Central Asia. Nothing
else is known of his family. Historians agree that Ghani was
a pupil of an eminent scholar and poet of his day, Mulla
Mohsin Fani. The epithet Mulla, which also goes with Ghani,
suggests that he must have received traditional religious
education in a local school and also achieved distinction as a
scholar. How he earned his living is not known, although his
aversion to making poetry a means for it is well known, a
trait especially remarkable in an age when it was customary
for poets to employ their poetic skills to seek favours from
rulers and nobles.
 Not only did Ghani abhor attending court, he also strikes
us as a man living an extremely frugal and ascetic life,
con ning himself to a solitary corner of his humble abode,
silently watching over the dismal condition of his people
and, occasionally, though obliquely, alluding to it in his
poetry. Unassuming by any standards, he yet seems highly
conscious of the quality of his verse and sometimes expresses
satisfaction over the fame his verse earned him:
My verses have travelled to Iran.
No, not just Iran, they have
travelled the world.
My name has attained
such fame in India,
As the signet ring’s mark
in black ink. *

That these assertions, while being part of the accepted

tradition of fakhr, or boasting of one’s poetic prowess, also
carry some historical validity is borne out by the testimonies
of several biographers and literary historians. One of the
earliest chroniclers, Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzoo (1689–1756),
gives the following estimate of the poet in his Majma‘un
Nafaa’is:
There are few poets comparable to Ghani among the latter-day
poets not only in Kashmir but also the rest of India. He excels
not only his contemporaries but also most of his predecessors
in his ability to compose novel poetic meanings, and
commands a great felicity of expression.1
And the celebrated modern critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
approvingly quotes another tazkirah writer:2
 Ghani Kashmiri, a poet who commanded respect and
admiration from Indians and Iranians alike, and about whom
Ikhlas says, ‘To this day, there hasn’t been a mazmun
composing poet like him from that heart-pleasing territory
[Kashmir], and in fact none like him has come out of the whole
of India.’3
Ghani’s fame during his lifetime is all the more
remarkable because the Mughal period witnessed an
unprecedented surge in literary activity in India, while
Kashmir attracted some of the outstanding talent in Persian
from India and Iran. At a time when India had become a
‘garden of nightingales’, it required an exceptional poetic
talent to gain distinction. Some of the eminent Iranian poets
who visited Kashmir during Ghani’s lifetime include Sa’ib
Tabrizi (d. 1677 or 1678), Abu Talib Kalim Kashani (d.
1651), Muhammad Quli Salim Tehrani (d. 1647 or 1648),
Muhammad Jan Qudsi Mashhadi (d. 1646 or 1647) and Mir
Ilahi (d. 1654). In fact, there is evidence that he forged
lasting friendships with many of them and his divan contains
a short elegiac chronogram written on the death of Abu
Talib Kalim, Shah Jahan’s poet laureate:
Alas, from the con nes
of this garden has own
Talib, that nightingale,
to the garden of bounty.
He has left, dropping the pen
from his hand.
Kalim has traversed this path
without his sta .4
 Why doesn’t the pen shed
tears of sorrow,
For poetry is orphaned
by the death of Talib?
Pining for him, the hearts
of poets,
Like the tongues of their pens
are cleft in two.
Yearning for him for ages
under the earth,
Qudsi and Salim have thrown
dust over their heads.
At last, their longing
nds ful lment
And all three are
together united.
Ghani proclaims the date
of his death:
‘Due to Kalim the Tur
of meaning was radiant.’5
Among the many stories popular about Ghani and also
reported by some historians is the one that describes his
meeting with Sa’ib, the famous Iranian poet who visited
Kashmir with his patron and the then Mughal governor of
the Valley, Zafar Khan Ahsan, himself a poet of repute.
Having failed to understand the meaning of kraal pan, which
in Kashmiri means the potter’s thread and which Ghani had
used in one of his verses, Sa’ib had decided to meet him
personally. He was highly impressed to meet someone whose
verses bore a marked resemblance to his own. The verse
reads:
 muye mayaan-e tu shudah kraal pan
kard judaa kaasaye sar haa zi tan
Your hair-thin waist has
become the potter’s thread,
Severing o from bodies
many a head.
It was, however, this verse that delighted him the most:
husn-e sabz-e bakhat-e sabz maraa kard aseer
daam hamrang-e zamin bud giriftaar shudam
Splendid down set against a
splendid face had me trapped.
The snare matched the ground
and I was captured.
According to the tazkirahs Majma‘un, Nafaa’is and
Majma‘ul Fusaha, Sa’ib was so fond of Ghani’s verses that he
would often ask people visiting Iran from India what gift
they had brought him, meaning, of course, some verses of
Ghani. He is said to have copied many of Ghani’s verses into
his own notebook and, according to Shibli Naumani, also
wrote a ‘response-ghazal’ to him which begins with:
Sa’ib, this ghazal is in response
to the one said by Ghani.
Oh, for those days when my desire’s pot
was covered with a lid!6
Ghani most probably lived his entire life in Kashmir and a
rare journey to the Indian plains seems to have ill agreed
with his temperament:
The scorching winds of India distress me.
O Fate, take me to the garden of Kashmir.
 The heat of exile robs me of peace.
Grant me a glimpse of my land’s milky dawn.
Almost all tazkirah writers have reported that Ghani
adopted an austere lifestyle, shunning the glamour of the
world and embracing the Su ideal of faqr, or poverty. These
traits of the poet would be celebrated nearly three centuries
later by one of his ardent admirers, Iqbal. In his Payaam-e
Mashriq (Message of the East) Iqbal sang thus of Ghani:
Ghani, that melodious nightingale of verse
Whose songs resonated in Kashmir’s paradise.
Who kept the door shut while at home
And left it open while away from it.
Someone said, ‘O soul-stirring bard,
This act of yours leaves all puzzled.’
How well replied he who had no wealth.
No wealth, except in the realm of meaning.
‘What friends see me doing is right.
My house guards nothing of value save me.
‘As long as Ghani sits in his house
All his wealth abides in it.
‘And when this illuminating candle is away
No abode is more desolate than his.’
Ghani seems to have lived long enough to know the
ailments attending old age. His pupil Muslim writes that he
had been reduced to a skeleton in his last days. He himself
repeatedly refers to some painful and distressing physical
ailment. A few verses from a fragment describing it are:
Day and night the pain of limbs
keeps me writhing on the oor.
 My frame has become one with
the cracks in the mat.
So in rm am I that my stick
too cannot help me stand.
Like a footprint I fail to
rise from the ground.
If my frame continues
to dry up like this,
Soon will my toes look
like shrivelled thorns.
On the heavens I would
take revenge for this a iction,
Only if my hands and feet could
soar high like my thoughts.
The story of your pain
is interminable, Ghani.
How long will you repeat
your tale to the doctors?
And a quatrain reads:
A icted with a pain that wears me out,
Would that my life were cut short!
Not fatal, yet this gnawing pain
Will keep me company till my death.
Ghani died in Srinagar in 1669 and lies buried in a grave
near his home, which is now dilapidated. Nasrabadi, a
tazkirah writer, narrates the following story about his death:
According to an authentic report, the Emperor of India [that is,
Aurangzeb] wrote to Saif Khan, Kashmir’s governor at the time,
to send Ghani to his court. Saif Khan summoned Ghani
informing him of the Emperor’s wish. Ghani refused to comply
saying, ‘Tell the King that Ghani is insane.’ Saif Khan said,
 ‘How can I call a sane man insane?’ At this Ghani tore his shirt
and went away like a frenzied man. After three days he died.7
Whatever the truth of the story, it speaks of the reputation
that Ghani enjoyed throughout—a man deeply committed to
his land and wary of the pitfalls of life at court. On his
death, Muslim, who also compiled and edited his divan,
wrote two chronograms, one of which is bilingual, consisting
of verses with one hemistich in Persian and the other in
Arabic. In the translation below, the italicized lines indicate
the Arabic:
On Ghani’s death the young and the old grieve
And all have retired for mourning.
If they ask you of the date of his death, say
‘The treasure of talent is hidden beneath the earth.’
And:
Yesterday I heard someone say, ‘Ghani is dead.’
‘Be silent,’ said I. ‘You have lost your head.’
Whose hearts are living die not, O ignorant one.
How can he die who lives free of sin?
His death means nothing but a change of realms.
He was pious, pure and bright.
Friends of God live life of a di erent kind.
He is dead but only to those who cannot see.
When the heart asked the head, ‘When did he die?’
It said, ‘Say, he didn’t live but as Ghani.’8
In the last couplet there is a pun on the word ‘Ghani’, which
literally means ‘self-contented’. The last couplets of both
chronograms give the year 1079 of the Muslim calendar,
corresponding to 1669 CE.
 Some historians have expressed the opinion that Ghani
destroyed a considerable portion of his poetry, a view that
does not seem to be true. It is now generally accepted that
Muslim brought together his scattered verses and compiled
them in a divan just a year after the poet’s death; the preface
written by Muslim to the divan suggests this clearly. Ghani
has been one of those much-read poets whose divan has gone
through several editions and has been published in di erent
publishing centres of India at least eleven times. Although
there are considerable variations among the di erent
manuscripts of his divan, scholars have done commendable
work in identifying and compiling the authentic version. The
divan, published by the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of
Arts, Culture and Languages in 1964 and reprinted in 1984,
is now accepted as authentic by common consent.

Ghani is essentially a poet of the ghazal, although he also

wrote a couple of short masnavis, one describing the winter
in Kashmir and another satirizing a barber. In addition to
these there are ninety-odd rubaa‘iyaat, or quatrains; a few
qit‘aat, or fragments, describing his physical pain and
ailment, and the harshness of winter; and a few
chronograms written on the deaths of the poets Abu Talib
Kalim and Mir Ilahi, and the Mughal governor Amir’ul Islam
Khan. A noticeable thing in his divan is the unusually large
number of solitary verses and also two- and three-verse
poems, which might have originally been part of full-length
ghazals.
The only available piece of prose written by the poet
himself relates to the incident when he was either actually,
or apprehended that he could be, accused of sariqa, or
plagiarism. The real or possible allegation that Ghani had
stolen a verse from Abdul Qadir Badayuni’s history and
presented it as his own left him distraught. Whatever little
can be considered historically valid about Ghani reveals him
to be a man equally self-respecting and sensitive. The prose
passage shows that he was so distressed by the accusation
that he actually gave up writing poetry until he had proved
his innocence. He writes:
God alone is witness to my distressed state. From that day I
have held my tongue between under my teeth, not allowing it
to utter anything and become a living example of this verse:
Give up speech to escape
the stings of critics.
Sealing one’s lips is better
than composing poetry.
If you can enjoy a sojourn in the garden of silence like a
rosebud, it is senseless to tread the thorn-strewn path of
eloquence:
The thornless rose of the garden
of silence is worth picking.
Lay o the prattling tongue
like an unruly slave.

Finally, it was discovered that the original text of Badayuni

contained no such verse and a scribe had interpolated one of
Ghani’s verses into a copy. In fact, while Ghani was
extremely sensitive about the charges of stealing poetic
themes from other poets, he was also keenly aware that his
themes were stolen by others. In a rare and rather
uncharacteristic outburst of spite, he heaps scorn on Tughra
Mashhadi, a poet notorious for charging others of stealing
his poems:
Tughra, whose soul is as base as his body,
the jealous enemy of all pure-hearted men,
complains that poets steal his poems.
They hate to utter his name, let alone his poems.

But he laments that his own verses are stolen:

Friends took my verses.
Pity, they took not my name.
And against those who are wont to steal he asserts his
superiority:
From no one do I borrow
the theme of my poetry.
For a delicate disposition
others’ speech is a burden.

Moreover, all plagiarists betray their true worth in the very

act of stealing:
The poet whose nature
inclines to stealing
Remains obtuse to the novel
meaning he steals.
Ghani is a keenly self-conscious poet who, not unlike
other sensitive poets, expects people to recognize his worth,
and nding them indi erent he sometimes complains and
sometimes pins his hope on posthumous fame:
Fame eluded my verse till the soul
was the body’s prisoner.
The fragrant musk found release
once the deer was slain.
 Almost all good poets have made the experience of poetic
creation or process itself a subject of their poetry and Ghani
is no exception. Although he claims absolute mastery in
making even intractable themes amenable, he is also aware
of the challenge of consistently creating novel and fresh
meanings:
Meaning cannot refuse
submission to Ghani’s genius.
Poetic themes were fashioned
for him at the dawn of creation.
Every moment it seeks to slip
from the mind’s nook.
Fresh poetic meaning is a gazelle
to be captured.

Ghani is aware that mere labour without skill does not make
a poet:
However hard the pen might strive,
it fails to attain meaning.
Mere labour without skill
is of no avail.
And yet, any genuine poet has to re ect deeply to produce
artistically consummate verse:
Until re ection has made the verse
t for composition,
Like the pen, my head remains
sunk in my shirt’s collar.

Despite his brilliance as a poet, not everything he wrote is

excellent. Scholars tend to agree that even the greatest poets
have found it di cult to consistently produce the best. In
the case of the ghazal, it is not uncommon to come across
some very remarkable verses with a few quite ordinary ones
in the same ghazal. Ghani himself admits to a certain
inability to produce uniformly majestic verse:
Exquisite verse too has
its ups and downs.
Fingers of the shining hand
too vary in length.
The style in which Ghani and most of his contemporaries
wrote fell into disfavour in Iran and India in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Consequently, his reputation
su ered. The blanket condemnation, or at least disapproval,
of this style is mainly responsible for the fact that in Iran,
and even in India, Ghani is not known as much today as he
was once. But in Kashmir, he has always been looked upon
as a poet of remarkable excellence. And despite the waning
of Persian language and literature since the past century or
so, Ghani has always been held in high esteem both in the
popular imagination and among the diminishing class of
students of Persian who can read and understand him. In
fact, he seems to be one of the very few Persian poets who
are still alive in the popular imagination of Kashmiris, the
numerous monuments named after him being a proof of this.
Not many people know, however, that his genius has been
acknowledged by some great poets, including Iqbal and the
great Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir, who found in him a model to
be emulated:
kuch gadaa shaa‘ir nahin hun Mir mein
tha mera sar-e mashq divan-e Ghani.
 Mir, I am a poet of no mean credentials.
For I have honed my skills on the divan of Ghani.
For Iqbal, Ghani was not only a model of Islamic austerity,
or faqr, but also ‘wealthy in the realm of meaning’, an
admiration borne out by the fact that he used some of
Ghani’s verses in his poems as tazmin, a practice where a
poet quotes verses of another poet in his own work. Even
some of Ghalib’s verses have been found to bear an
unmistakable mark of Ghani, which has led some to believe
that he used Ghani’s verses without acknowledging his
indebtedness to him. To substantiate this argument, the
following Urdu verse by Ghalib is often quoted:
zabaan-e ahl-e zabaan mein hai marg khaamushi
yeh baat bazm mein roshan hui zabaan-e shama
‘Silence means death for men of eloquence.’
In the assembly the candle thus spoke to me.
The verse, as is evident, is almost an exact translation of one
of Ghani’s:
shud raushanam az sham’ ki dar bazm-e hareefan
khaamush shudan marg buvad ahl-e zabaan raa.
‘In the assembly of rivals silence means death.’
The burning candle spoke thus to me.
It is almost impossible to say whether it is a case of sariqa,
plagiarism, or tavaarud, unintentional coincidence, although,
given the great stature that Ghalib enjoys, most people
would be disinclined to call it the former.
Whether or not Ghalib used Ghani’s verses, the fact that
Mir, whom Ghalib considered the greatest poet of the Urdu
ghazal, claims to be no ordinary poet because he has
meticulously tried to emulate Ghani is itself a glorious
tribute to Ghani. Coincidental as it may again appear, the
words Ghalib used for Mir in one of his much-quoted verses
were used more than a hundred years before him by a
Kashmiri Persian poet Saati (d. 1731) for Ghani. Ghalib’s
verse:
rekhte ke tum hi ustaad nahin ho Ghalib
kehte hain agle zamaane mein koi Mir bhi tha
Ghalib! You alone are not a master of Urdu.
They say there was another in the past by the name of Mir.
seems to be almost an exact Urdu rendition of Saati’s Persian
verse:
nukta pardaaz agar hast faqir hast imruz
pish azin ahd shunidam ki Ghani ham budast.
If there is a master craftsman
today, it is me.
They say there was another
by the name of Ghani in olden days.
In Kashmir, Ghani has been eulogized by poet after poet—
Mehjoor, Abdul Ahad Azad and Rahman Rahi, to name a
few. It is unfortunate that today the barrier of language
makes him inaccessible to the vast majority of his people.

PERSIAN IN KASHMIR: AN OVERVIEW

Among several centres of Persian learning that emerged in
the Indian subcontinent following the establishment of
Muslim rule, Kashmir enjoyed a distinct position. Kashmir’s
cultural ties with Persia, as some archaeological ndings
suggest, date back to ancient times. But it is with the
beginning of the Muslim rule in the fourteenth century that
Kashmir became a great centre of Persian scholarship,
creating a fertile ground for the growth of native writers and
attracting distinguished men from Iran and the rest of India.
P.N.K. Bamzai notes the transition from Sanskrit to Persian
thus:
With the increasing patronage extended to Persian scholarship
by the Sultans, Sanskrit receded to the background and
Kashmiri students switched over to the study of Persian, which
became the language of educated classes and even found its
way into the villages. The process was completed with the
replacement of Sanskrit by Persian as the court language
during the reign of Zain-ul-abidin. Thenceforth, Kashmir
produced poets and writers in Persian whose beauty of style
and depth of thought equalled that of the litterateurs of
Persia.9

Because of its strong cultural, religious, literary and even

climatic a nities with Iran, Kashmir came to be known as
Iran-e-Saghir (Minor Iran). During Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin’s
rule (1420–70) Persian received an unprecedented impetus.
Himself a poet and a great patron of learning, he is credited
with establishing a daar-u-tarjama, or a translation bureau,
where scholars translated texts from Sanskrit and other
languages into Persian and from Arabic and Persian into
Sanskrit and Kashmiri. It was here that the Hindu scriptures
such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were translated
into Persian for the rst time. Mulla Ahmad Kashmiri, Zain-
ul-Abidin’s poet laureate and an outstanding scholar,
translated the famous Sanskrit works Rajatarangini and Katha
Sarita Sagar into Persian. Under the sultan’s patronage,
Kashmir’s fame as an outstanding centre of learning spread
to Iran and Central Asia. For the rst time Kashmiri poets
started using Persian as the medium of poetic expression and
interacting on a regular basis with the poets of Iran.
Persian became the o cial language in the courts of
Shahmiri sultans and also gained immense importance with
the arrival of Su s and preachers from Persia and Central
Asia, who poured into the Valley to disseminate the new
faith. Persian thus found the opportunity to ourish in
Kashmir, with all the sultans, without exception, patronizing
it with enthusiasm. Direct contact with Persia and Central
Asia gave a further boost to its progress. The most important
gure, and according to many the founding father of Muslim
Kashmir, was Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, the famous Su
saint and great missionary who left behind a legacy and, in
the words of Iqbal, laid the foundations for this Iran-e
Saghir. Accompanied by a large number of preachers and
scholars, he not only put Islam on a rm footing in Kashmir
but also transformed the social, political and economic
scenarios of the Valley. He is also believed to have
introduced new arts and crafts of Persian or Central Asian
origin.
In the religious sphere, perhaps the most signi cant
development in this period was the growth of an indigenous
religious movement called the Rishi movement, which,
because of its impact, has become an area of great interest
for scholars. According to some, the movement, beginning
sometime in the fteenth century and lasting for longer than
three centuries, was responsible for bringing the vast
majority of Kashmir’s population within the fold of Islam.
Founded by the well-known saint Sheikh Nooruddin Rishi, it
derived its strength from the ideals of faqr, or extreme
austerity, devotion to the spiritual rather than the formal
features of religion and a deep commitment to non-violence.
Stressing the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam, the Rishis
shunned all ritualism and urged people to live a pure and
simple life.
Sheikh Nooruddin was an ardent preacher as well as a
poet who wrote didactic verses that had a tremendous
appeal among the common people. He also vehemently
attacked the decadent religious and social institutions of his
day and highlighted the signi cance of pious living. His
untiring appeals to his fellowmen to cultivate the virtues of
self-realization, prayer, penance and poverty left an indelible
imprint on the collective consciousness of Kashmiris.
Nooruddin wrote verses known as shruk in Kashmiri, which
is probably a derivation from the Sanskrit shloka.
Nooruddin’s poetry has been credited not only for its
reformative intent and impact but also for its artistic quality.
Furthermore, it has immense historical value as it truly
re ects the social reality of its times.
If Nooruddin represents the ascetic and highly disciplined
approach of a Muslim Rishi, his elder contemporary, the
much-celebrated Lalla, represents a profoundly mystical
dimension of Kashmiri consciousness. This Saivite wanderer,
whose songs reverberated in almost every Kashmiri
household, extolled in her verses mystical ideas of divine
love and also attacked all forms of dogmatism and ritualism.
Lalla’s songs are undoubtedly among the nest specimens of
Kashmiri mystical poetry. She is also uniquely fortunate to
have found quite a few translators and interpreters, and as a
result her poetry is known to many outside Kashmir as well.
Her verses, known as vaakhs, are quatrains with a speci c
rhyme scheme and were orally transmitted for a long time.
Lalla’s thought, enshrined in her vaakhs, has had a strong
in uence on the socio-cultural ethos of Kashmir. One of her
vaakhs, translated by P.K. Parimoo, is:
When my mind was cleansed of impurities,
Like a mirror of its dust and dirt,
I recognized the self in me:
When I saw Him dwelling in me,
I realized that He was everything
And I was nothing.10

The similarities between Lalla and Sheikh Nooruddin have

long been a subject of interest for scholars, but what strikes
one instantly about both is the ardent mystical passion
coupled with the zeal to reform. Deeply mystical and
didactic at the same time, their poetry is duly credited with
having decisively shaped the literary milieu of Kashmir.
Both Lalla and Sheikh Nooruddin wrote in the vernacular.
It is interesting to see how deeply Kashmiri was in uenced
by Persian during the subsequent centuries. One of the most
remarkable instances of how one language can in uence
another is of Persian’s in uence on Kashmiri. In fact,
present-day Kashmiri owes its existence largely to this
in uence as most of the Sanskrit words were slowly replaced
by Persian ones. Not only did Persian provide a new
vocabulary, idioms and phrases to Kashmiri, it also changed
generic modes of literary expression, largely substituting
earlier forms such as the vaakh and shruk for the ghazal,
masnavi, rubaa‘i and others. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century Kashmiri poets such as Mahmud Gami and Rasul Mir
are known to be the pioneers of the ghazal and masnavi in
Kashmiri.
It is therefore not surprising that on its arrival in the
fteenth century, Persian poetry found an extremely
favourable environment in Kashmir which already had a
strong mystical and religious tradition. As G.L. Tikku
comments:
Both the tradition of mystical poetry and of court poetry as
they had hitherto developed in Persia arrived in Kashmir in the
fourteenth century. And since the carriers of Islam to the valley
were more of the mystical than the courtly tradition the rst
exposure of Kashmiris to Persian literature was dominated by
its mystical strain.11

The Su /Rishi thought also deeply coloured the

intellectual and emotional make-up of most of the poets and
provided them with a rich repertoire of themes and images
to work with. The pervasive in uence of Su ideas can be
gauged from the fact that one hardly comes across a poet
who remained immune from it. As we shall see, Ghani’s
poetry, although not mystical in the real sense, bears a clear
imprint of Su ideas.
 One of the earliest Persian poets was Sayyid Muhammad
Amin Uwaisi (d. 1484), the adopted son of Sultan Zain-ul-
Abidin and a venerated saint of Kashmir. According to
popular narratives, he was assassinated in his own house
and wrote the following two quatrains in his own blood on
the walls of his house:
I wander the world,
a reveller blessed with Messiah’s breath
I don’t consider the two worlds worth a g.
If my head rolls in your love, I don’t care.
Your secret shall remain hidden in my heart.
No use to me is the worldly wisdom of men.
Make no mistake that guiltless I am slain.
Come now and sing a doleful song on my grave,
That the tyrants’ faces be blackened with disgrace.
His poetry marks the beginning of a genuinely Kashmiri
contribution to Persian poetry and also lays down the road
map for later poets in terms of mood, themes and imagery.
At the end of the Shahmiri rule, the Chaks came to power
in 1561 and ruled for a brief period. The Chak rule
witnessed a lot of political unrest in Kashmir, which nally
led to its annexation by the Mughals in 1586. During the
Chak period various genres of Persian poetry were adopted
by Kashmiri poets, especially the masnavi. The foremost poet
of this period is Sheikh Yaqub Sar (1529–94), a versatile
genius, extremely well schooled in several sciences such as
theology, jurisprudence, grammar, mysticism, rhetoric,
Quranic hermeneutics and poetry. Sar travelled widely and
is said to have received guidance from the great masters of
mysticism. In Kashmir, he is also known as Jami-e Sani,
Jami the Second, after the famous Abdur-Rahman Jami.
Sar was a proli c writer and as a poet he is known for his
excellent quintet of masnavis, a khamsa, written in imitation
of the famous classical Persian poet Nizami.
Another poet of renown of this period was Habibullah
Naushehri or Hubbi (1556–1617), whose lyrics resonate in
Kashmir even today. Hubbi wrote poetry in both Persian and
Kashmiri and achieved distinction as a Su . His poetry is of
the devotional kind and is informed by the common Su
themes of divine love, devotion to one’s spiritual mentor,
renunciation of the world and the like. In fact, these themes
recur in almost all Persian poetry of the period and one
hardly comes across any major poet who was also not a Su
of some kind. A Persian ghazal by Hubbi contains the
following beautiful verses:
Say, O heart, why
this di erence of creeds?
Why is this one an in del and
the other a believer?
The Almighty did not create
the di erence of sects.
Neither belief nor disbelief, neither
doubt nor faith, have a place there.
My heart is drunk with the cup of
‘Am I not your Lord?’12
Having come here drunk,
I have no truck with reason or sobriety.
O counsellor! Don’t ask me
to give up wine.
My vows to be a drunkard
go back to eternity.
 With the wine of Divine Oneness,
the server has lled my cup.
No wonder I have become a cup,
passing from hand to hand.
As the door of our tavern was not
opened to everyone,
The multitudes are astray,
wandering from door to door.
And all who found their way
to the tavern, forthwith
Deserted their homes and came
to sit at its door.
It is noteworthy that many of the poets were also active as
preachers, theologians or practising Su s in some order.
Baba Dawood Khaki (d. 1586), to take one example, was a
poet, but, more importantly, also a scholar and a Su
actively engaged in the social and political a airs of his
times.
Perhaps the most popular poetic voice of the Chak period
was that of Habba Khatun’s (d. 1600?), the queen of the last
king of Kashmir, Yusuf Shah Chak. Their love story,
immortalized in folk songs and even movies, tells how
Habba Khatun was living a life of misery as the wife of an
ordinary villager when the king, during a hunting
expedition, saw her singing and instantly fell in love with
her. Their happiness as a married couple proved to be short-
lived as Yusuf Shah, invited by Akbar in 1586, was
treacherously incarcerated in Patna. Thereafter, Habba
Khatun, separated from her lover, sang sad but melodious
songs of longing in Kashmiri, which are still extremely
popular. A poignant mood of separation informs these lyrics
and they also have a striking spontaneity about them:
What rival of mine has lured
you away from me?
Why have you turned
away from me, my love?
Even at midnight I kept
my door open for you.
Didn’t you have a moment
to spare for me?
I am like the fast-melting snow
in the summer’s sun.
And like a forlorn jasmine
in the midst of the garden.
Come, for the garden that is yours
yearns for you.
Why have you turned
away from me, my love?
Ceaselessly tears ow
from my eyes.
Desire for you has lled
my whole being.
Why have you forgotten my path?
Why have you turned away from me,
my love?
But it was with the beginning of the Mughal rule in
Kashmir that Persian reached its zenith. The fame of Mughal
patronage for arts and learning had already spread far and
wide, attracting poets and scholars from Persia, making
India the most cherished and sought-after destination. Abdul
Qadir Badayuni, the noted historian of Akbar’s period, in his
Muntakhab’ut Tawarikh provides an exhaustive list of the
poets who attended Akbar’s court and received huge rewards
for their craft. Literary historians tend to agree that it was
the enormous wealth of India that was primarily responsible
for the large number of poets pouring in from Iran and
elsewhere. Muhammad Quli Salim, one of the Iranian poets
who made India his home and died in Kashmir, wrote:
There is no provision for attaining
perfection on the soil of Iran.
Until you turn to India,
the henna fails to bloom.
Kalim Kashani, Shah Jahan’s poet laureate, on having to
leave India against his will once, lamented:
I am a captive of India and
deeply anguished at this departure.
Where will the uttering wings take
the bird wallowing in its blood?
Urged by his friends, Kalim
sets o to Iran wailing.
Like the camel bell which journeys
on the feet of others.
Desire for India makes my
wistful eyes turn back.
Though facing forward, I see not
what comes my way.
Even Sa’ib, who stayed in India for a few years, pays his
homage in this verse:
Why shouldn’t I praise India,
for in its black soil
 The ame of my fame donned
the robe of excellence.
Such poetic extolling of India makes perfect sense when we
remember that many poets, including Salim and Kalim, were
weighed in gold by the Mughal emperors and princes. Dara
Shukoh is said to have gifted one lakh rupees to the Iranian
poet Mirza Razi Danish for this verse:
taak raa sar sabz kun ai abr-e naisaan dar bahaar
qatrae taa may tavaanad shud chira gauhar shavad
Make the vine greener now
in spring, O spring cloud.
If a drop can become wine,
why should it become a pearl?
Given such patronage, it is no surprise that literary activities
ourished with an unprecedented vibrancy. As Kashmir’s
ties with the rest of India strengthened, many poets, nding
the Indian climate appallingly inclement, visited and settled
in Kashmir. Kashmir’s beauty had already become a
favourite topic with many of them. To the Indian climate,
which many of them described as jigar khwaar, or heart-
consuming, they found an ideal alternative in Kashmir. On
his rst visit to Kashmir in 1589, Akbar was accompanied by
a host of poets including Faizi and Ur , both of whom wrote
beautiful odes to its scenic beauty. Stunned by the natural
scenery of the land and its extremely pleasant climate, Ur
exclaimed:
Every scorched soul
that lands in Kashmir,
 Will come to life and y away
even if it were a roasted bird.
Besides Ur , Faizi and Talib Amuli, who had accompanied
the Mughal emperors to Kashmir, there were many others
who made it their permanent home. According to some
tazkirah writers, Kalim, Salim, Qudsi and Tughra are buried
in a graveyard that was known as mazaar-e shu‘araa (poets’
graveyard) on the banks of the Dal Lake in Srinagar. With
the Mughals gaining a rm foothold in the Valley, the native
talent too found a new impetus and took to Persian poetry
with renewed enthusiasm. The most prominent name to give
it an enormous boost was Zafar Khan Ahsan, the Mughal
governor of Kashmir who was in charge of the
administration from 1633 to 1641, and then from 1643 to
1647. Himself a poet of eminence, he patronized many
others, including Sa’ib whom he brought along to Kashmir.
Zafar Khan initiated the Persian tradition of mushaa‘ira, or
poetic symposium, in Srinagar, which was attended by both
Iranian and Kashmiri poets. If Sa’ib, Kalim, Salim, Mir Ilahi,
Qudsi and Tughra Mashhadi were the Iranian representative
voices, Kashmir o ered its native talent through Fasihi,
Fitrati, Mulla Zehni, Mehdi, Fani, Ghani, Juya, Guya, Auji
and others too numerous to name. The interaction between
the two resulted in vibrant literary activity in Kashmir. Zafar
Khan—whose takhallus, or pen name, was Ahsan—and Sa’ib
enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect and admiration.
Although he boasts of the high quality of his verse, Zafar
Khan also credits Sa’ib with pioneering a new style in
writing the ghazal, which became the hallmark of the poetry
of the period:
Among my peers if I boast
of my poetry, Ahsan,
It is because it is no less
remarkable than Fighani’s.
From now on Ahsan shall shun
the style of his peers,
For the bounty of Sa’ib’s genius has
inspired his fresh expressions.

Zafar Khan, besides leaving behind a divan, which includes

ghazals and rubaa‘iyaat, wrote masnavis such as Masnaviye
Kashmir, Jalwaye Naaz and Maikhaanaye Raaz. Here are a
few verses written by him on the beauty of the famous Dal
Lake:
A ride in the Dal refreshes
the heart and soul,
Making us renew our
allegiance to the cup.
Countless gardens bloom
in its waters,
As if early spring
lies hidden in them.
Myriad blossoms make
it the world’s envy.
You could become a
water bird in its love.
The ghazal was the favourite genre of poetry in this
period, although masnavis and, on occasion, qasidas, or
panegyrics, were also written. Ghani’s teacher and Yaqub
Sar ’s disciple, Mulla Mohsin Fani (d. 1671), was a
renowned poet of this period. Believed to be closely
associated with the Su circle of Dara Shukoh, Fani wrote
masnavis and ghazals. His four masnavis that have come
down to us are Masdarul-Asraar, Naaz-u-Niyaaz, Mah-u-Mihr
and Haft Akhtar. For a long time Fani was believed to be the
author of a famous treatise on religious schools, Dabistaan-e
Mazaahib (School of Religions), but modern scholarship has
tended to reject this view and Fani’s reputation now rests on
his poetry rather than any prose work. Here are a few verses
from one of his ghazals:
Be not enamoured of your
hue and scent like the rose.
Learn to seal your lips
from speech like the bud.
With your dripping sword
I moistened my throat.
With your stream thus
I made my stream ow.
Every heart rent in the grief
you caused stitches its tear
With the needles of eyelashes
and the thread of tears.
Drowned in the sea, yet not a
drop fell to my lot.
Like a bubble I thus
smashed my own ask.
Fani, none attains his
heart’s wish here.
Never pledge yourself
to your desire.
And a few more selected randomly from various ghazals
read as follows:
Until I behold the niche of
those twin eyebrows,
My head shall not bow
in the prayer niche.
My lips know nothing of
my grief-stricken heart.
Where is the con dant to
relate my woes about you?
Fani, seeking redress, says this
to her drunken eye,
‘Taking my heart away was like
stealing the lamp from the Kaaba.’
From the revels of wine banquet,
you will relish the real taste,
When one night in drunkenness
you bite your own lip.
The seventeenth century in Kashmir was, therefore,
evidently a period when native poets found vast
opportunities of interaction with their Iranian and Indian
counterparts, which helped create an exuberant environment
for Persian poetry. The two main trends of poetry, the
courtly and the mystical, remained dominant, although Su
poetry took precedence in terms of the sheer corpus
produced as also its general popularity among the readers.
In actual practice, however, both courtly and mystical
poetry employed the same kind of symbolism and imagery.
Alongside these two trends, there were poets like Ghani who
were neither court poets nor essentially Su s and who chose
poetry as their preferred mode of expression. Hubbi, Baba
Dawood Khaki and Mirza Muhammad Akmal Kamil (1645–
1719)—famous for his Bahrul Irfan, also known as Masnavi-e
Saani, Masnavi the Second, after Rumi’s Masnavi—could be
said to have belonged to the latter category. Ghani seems to
have made use of both the Su and court traditions in his
poetry. As we shall see, he followed and contributed to the
new style that his Iranian and some Indian contemporaries,
many of whom were associated with the courts, had
pioneered.

GHANI: STYLE, IMAGERY AND THEMES

In literary circles, Ghani is recognized as the most
outstanding native poet and the representative of a speci c
style of Persian poetry of this period in Kashmir. He is
essentially a mazmun aafreen, a creator of novel poetic
themes and meanings. The ability to create fresh metaphors
is the hallmark of all good poetry and Ghani possesses a
remarkable gift for creating metaphors and similes which
draw striking comparisons between apparently dissimilar
and disparate situations or objects. His poetry testi es to his
imaginative acumen by which he transforms the data of
ordinary experience into rich poetical output.
The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries witnessed the
owering of a new style in the Persian ghazal, which came
to be known as sabk-e Hindi or the ‘Indian style’. Although
many scholars have argued that there is nothing speci cally
Indian about the style, it is well established that it ourished
during the Mughal period when a great in ux of poets from
Iran and other regions took place. Thus Ur (d. 1591),
Naziri (d. 1614), Talib Amuli (d. 1626–27), Abu Talib Kalim,
Salim Tehrani and numerous others made India their home
and achieved distinction in Indian courts. In addition to
these, countless poets of Indian origin made their mark in
Persian and earned accolades and admiration from their
Iranian counterparts.
For its detractors, Indian-style poetry marks a departure
from the earlier, more indigenous and hence ‘purer’ styles in
its excessive reliance on rhetorical devices such as conceit,
pun, ambiguity and paradox. Alleging that the poets of this
style employed a hypercerebral and convoluted diction,
some Iranian critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries held the Indian and Indian-domiciled Iranian poets
responsible for turning their backs on the uent, simple and
melli uous style of the earlier Persian masters. These
opinions gained acceptance due to the emergence of a new
literary movement in Iran in the eighteenth century known
as adabi baazgasht, or ‘literary revival’. The movement, not
unlike most other literary movements, largely de ned itself
in contradistinction to what it held to be the characteristic
features of the earlier period, dominated by the Indian style.
Iranian critics such as Azar Beg, Raza Quli Khan and Taqi
Bahar wrote disapprovingly of the style, which they rather
pejoratively called the Indian style. In India, Shibli Naumani
followed his Iranian counterparts by giving an overall
negative estimation of this style. Shibli preferred the term
tarz-e taazah, or ‘new style’, to sabk-e Hindi and regarded
with disfavour its intellectual ingenuity. Echoing the
Romantic fallacy, which locates the origin of poetry in the
intensity of the poet’s feelings and evaluates it by its
capacity to a ect the reader’s emotions, he discredited much
of Indian-style poetry, holding that it was not suitable for
the ghazal, which is essentially a love lyric. To quote S.R.
Faruqi, ‘Shibli’s disapproval of abstraction, complex
metaphoricity, ambiguity and high imaginativeness
particularly recalls the prevalent Victorian literary bias
against these things.’13 One is also tempted to quote Faruqi’s
swipe at Shibli, ‘given such friends one doesn’t need
enemies’.14 Although Shibli criticized what he called the
‘new style’, he thoroughly discussed Sa’ib and Abu Talib
Kalim, especially the former whom he, in a clear instance of
what seems no less than a self-contradiction, regarded as one
of the most remarkable poets of the seventeenth century.
Shibli, however, righty identi ed two main features he
thought were typical of the Indian style: tamseel, or
exempli cation, and ihaam, or wordplay.
Ghani, as we have seen, was a contemporary of Kalim,
Salim, Qudsi and Sa’ib, all of whom were present in Kashmir
at the same time around the middle of the seventeenth
century. There is ample historical evidence to suggest that
these poets knew and admired each other. Ghani’s meeting
with Sa’ib has been reported by many tazkirah writers, while
his elegiac chronograms on Kalim’s and Mir Ilahi’s death
suggest that the poets enjoyed cordial relations. Critical
assessment has generally regarded these poets among the
nest practitioners of the Indian style and Shibli too,
notwithstanding his somewhat adverse judgement, credits
them with re ning the ‘new style’.
After su ering neglect and disapprobation for a long time,
the poets of the Indian style are now being reconsidered in
both Iran and India, and the tendency to regard them as
preoccupied with arti ciality and unhealthy intellectualism
is also being examined. To take an example, Mirza Abdul
Qadir Bedil (1644–1720), of Azimabad, India, a poet whose
name has become almost a byword for complexity of style
and who, according to many critics, is the foremost
representative of the Indian style, has recently earned his
due share of acclaim from Iranian critics. Sa’ib too is now
widely recognized as one of the most brilliant poets of his
age. His use of metaphors, conceits and other sophisticated
poetical devices has found appeal with many modern critics.
Paul Losensky remarks thus about Sa’ib:
Sa’eb is best known for his gures of thought. He frequently
refers to his siva-ye taza or ‘fresh style’ and boasts of its mana-
ye bigana (unfamiliar or alien conceit), mana-ye rangin (colorful
or variegated idea), and mazmun-e barjasta (outstanding
conceit). This ‘poetics of the new’ prizes the unexpected turn of
thought or startling connection between image and idea.15
And about the artistic merits of his use of tamseel he writes:
Sa’eb is particularly renowned for his mastery of a device
called tamsil or ersal-e masal, in which a claim is made in one
half of the verse and an exemplum is adduced to support it in
the other, as in this opening verse: ‘When a man grows old, his
greed grows young: sleep grows heavy just before the dawn’
(adami pir chu shud hirs javan migardad / khvab dar waqt-e
 sahargah geran migardad). This technique produces a compound
metaphor, a miniature allegory.16
Long before Losensky, the renowned Orientalist E.G.
Browne, in his A Literary History of Persia, had expressed his
admiration for Sa’ib in unequivocal terms and attributed it
to his brilliant use of various poetic devices.17
Not only Sa’ib but Kalim too derives his strength from
using similes and metaphors in the same manner as Ghani,
which quite often results in delightful poetry.
He who learns the mysteries of existence
leaves the world forthwith.
When one has learned one’s lessons well,
one bids farewell to the school.
My skill delivers me not
from my wretched state.
Like the ruin which does not
ourish by the treasure it hides.
Her union with me is like
the wave’s fondness for the shore.
Always with me, yet ever
receding from me.
It will be worthwhile to look at some of Ghani’s verses as
an illustration of his dexterity in employing these very
devices:
Her decked vermilion feet,
his endless prostrations.
What act, for a Hindu,
can excel the worship of re!
The skies are in motion to
put my ill luck to sleep.
 The rocking cradle brings
comfort to the fretful child.
Fleeting beauty is unworthy of love.
The lamp of lightning’s ash attracts
no moth.
Like the whirlwind, I am
ever free from bonds.
Abode on back, I have
no worries of settling down.
From the teller of beads a whisper
reaches my ears:
‘A hundred hearts lose their
peace to bring solace to one.’
Ghani, like the shadow of the bird
ying in the course of love,
Falling into the dust will not
disrupt my ight.
The company of her tresses
made me famous throughout.
Like the seal’s mark which
owes its fame to black ink.
These verses, chosen randomly from di erent ghazals, are
just a few examples of the delightful use of metaphors and
similes that characterizes much of Ghani’s poetry. As is
instantly evident, they bring out a connection between the
idea and the image, thereby bringing about a new set of
connotations to bear upon the image. They suggest what
Wordsworth described as a process of:
observation of a nities
In objects where no brotherhood exists
 To passive minds.18
Far from re ecting a lack of organic sensibility that would
enable a poet to fuse disparate experiences into an artistic
unity, presenting an abstract idea in the rst hemistich and
following it with concrete exempli cation in the second
creates a ne balance between a direct abstract proposition
and its concretization and helps bring a compactly built
world of distich, or sher, into existence. The striking manner
of linking thought with image is a way of startling the
reader, and wonder, surprise and revelation have always
been accepted as important functions of poetry. The
technique also foregrounds an aspect of reality which tends
to be overlaid with familiarity and custom. In fact, modern
criticism has recognized defamiliarization as the primary
aim of all poetry. Paul Losensky rightly comments on the
signi cance of bigana, or unfamiliar poetic meanings:
Bigana suggests the Russian formalist concept of ‘making it
strange’ (ostranenie), according to which the power of poetry
resides in its ability to disrupt our normal perceptions of
literature, language, and reality.19
In addition to verses where a poetic proof is presented in
the second hemistich of an a rmation stated in the rst
portion of the distich, Ghani also displays a remarkable
dexterity in producing verses that are themselves compound
or extended metaphors:
With every step the
anklet cries out:
‘Beauty, O fair ones,
has her feet in the stirrup.’
 To catch your fragrance,
O rosy-cheeked one,
Spring has its feet
blistered due to dew.
Why grieve if wine’s
water bird is slow to take o ?
In capturing the colour that has ed
it becomes a royal falcon.
I illuminate the world,
myself darkened by ill luck.
How can the lamp rid itself
of its shadow?
Coming out of the beloved’s eye
the kohl stick remarked:
‘A stroll through the tavern
wipes away the dust of thoughts.’
These and many other such verses testify to Ghani’s ability
to imagine situations which are not just embroidered with
certain gurative devices, but where the fundamental
imaginative process reveals itself to be metaphorical. The
metaphors used, at least in some verses, reveal a mode of
experiencing the subtle aspects of reality rather than an
embellishment of a prior known fact.
Moreover, fresh poetic meanings can be created from a
well-worn image only by using it in contexts that bring its
di erent connotative aspects into play. Ghani, working with
the conventional repertoire of images of the Persian ghazal,
invests some of them with multiple and often contradictory
meanings. An example of this is the image of habaab, or
bubble, which is used to suggest diverse ideas in the
following verses:
 Too imsy to bear ties are
the apparels of the burdenless.
Like an air bubble my robes
are without a stitch.
Though the sea harbours
meanings in plenty,
Mine is a pearl,
theirs a bubble.
The silent lips of the bubble
whispered into the diver’s ears:
‘A pearl more precious
you shall never nd.’
No one fathoms the sea of
nakedness like me.
Like the bubble my skin
and garment are one.
A dull mind may x its gaze on the book
Yet meaning shall remain beyond its grasp.
The empty-headed fail to fathom the depths,
Like a hollow bubble they can never plunge the sea.
Alas! So swiftly did youth’s ebriety pass
Before we could savour fully the ruby wine.
We opened our eyes to behold the world
And the bubble burst …
Opening the eye in
love’s tempestuous sea
Brought me to naught
like a bubble.
The bubble thus becomes a symbol for such diverse ideas
as hollowness, incapacity, lightness, transience, perfection
and nakedness.
 Among the earlier Persian poets, ihaam—that is, double
entendre or wordplay—was used by Amir Khusrau to
achieve great poetical e ects. But in the hands of later poets
such as Sa’ib, Kalim and Ghani, the technique was further
re ned and used with remarkable nesse. As S.R. Faruqi
remarks, ‘wordplay infuses new life into old themes, expands
the horizon of meaning, and often makes for an ambiguity of
tone which enriches the total feel of the poem’.20 A few
examples from Ghani’s poetry will illustrate how he employs
this device to produce what may be called ‘multilayered
poetry’.
az kinaaram dukhtar-e raz kard taa pahloo tihee
kaar-e man aknoon Ghani baa ti -e ashk uftaadah ast
Since the daughter of vine
has slipped from my embrace,
Ghani, I am left to deal
with the child of tears.
In this verse the Persian dukhtar-e raz in the rst hemistich
denotes wine but literally means ‘daughter of vine’.
Likewise, ti -e ashk in the second hemistich means both a
crying child and a droplet of tears. The verse exploits the
double meaning of these words to conjure up two di erent
situations: one where the speaker laments his separation
from wine and says that constant crying is now his lot and
the other where he mourns separation from a woman who
has left behind a crying child.
bastah shud har chand dar yak bahr ma‘na haaye tar
ma‘naye mardum habaab u ma‘naye man gauhar ast
 Though the sea harbours
meanings in plenty,
Mine is a pearl,
theirs a bubble.
The Persian for sea is bahr, which also means the metre in
which verse is written. The verse simultaneously brings both
meanings into play.
na daar-e aakhirat nay daar-e dunya dar nazar daaram
zi ishqat kaar chun Mansur ba daar-e digar daaram
Neither this abode I desire
nor the next one.
Like Mansur, in your love,
I desire one beyond both.
Again, the Persian daar means both abode and gibbet. In the
context of the verse both are simultaneously implied, as
Mansur by preferring to die on a gibbet also chose an abode
beyond this world and the paradise of the orthodox.
heechgah lab nakunad baaz ba dushnaam-e raqeeb
man ba tang aamadam az yaar ki pur beedahan ast
Not once did she open her
mouth to curse the rival.
I am fed up of a love
so tight-lipped.
Translated here as tight-lipped, bee-dahan literally means
‘mouthless’. In Persian poetry the smallness of the beloved’s
mouth is a mark of her beauty which, in keeping with the
conventions of hyperbole, is sometimes compared to just a
tiny dot. The verse draws on both meanings of bee-dahan,
thus saying: Would that she were not so beautiful to attract
the rival; and, would that she had the will to curse him! By
this device the poet makes use of a verbal nuance which, in
the words of William Empson, ‘gives room for alternative
reactions to the same piece of language’.21 Unfortunately,
the beauty of punning and wordplay is one among those
things that are lost in translation.
Yet another outstanding feature of Ghani is his brilliant
use of paradox. As the noted American critic Cleanth Brooks
has observed, it is generally, and wrongly, assumed that
paradox has no place in poetry. On the contrary, he argues,
much of good poetry is fundamentally paradoxical. Brooks
and some other New Critics regarded paradox central to
poetry because of its ability to embody a truth about reality
which scienti c or rational discourse is unable to capture.
Reality, in other words, is not amenable to a purely logical
analysis, and poetry, by dealing with its contradictory and
paradoxical aspects, performs a very important function.
Ghani’s poetry o ers fascinating instances of the use of
paradox:
So enfeebled that life
struggles to reach my lips,
The strength of my in rmity
keeps me alive.
Attempting to conceal,
I revealed the secret of my love.
The teeth of the stitch tore
asunder my veil.
How much more will water
thirst for a kiss at your feet?
 O sapling of the garden of beauty,
raise it from the dust.
Prohibitor! Want to make
the wine maker redundant?
Better that you crush the
grape cups.
Deep prayer checks
the wandering mind.
Many locks are unlocked
by locked hands.
The above discussion would perhaps make it su ciently
clear that the strength of Ghani’s poetry lies in working on
familiar images to create novel and striking metaphors and
poetic themes. If the classical Persian ghazal is centred on
more or less a de nite set of themes and images, which have
kept recurring through the ages, then a poet’s success lies
primarily in creating something new from something very
familiar.
In fact, one might say that the world of the ghazal is a
world of certain typical situations and characters, which
makes it a distinct genre of poetry. It is worthwhile to quote
Faruqi and Pritchett in this regard:
The human inhabitants of the ghazal universe are stylized, and
exist chie y to ful ll certain necessary functions: the lover’s
friends, his con dant, his rivals, his messenger, the beloved’s
cruel doorkeeper, the Shaikh full of reproachful and
ostentatious piety, the Advisor with his unheeded words of
caution, etc. The geography of the ghazal universe includes
settings for the lover’s every mood: the garden for dialogue
between nature and man, the social gathering for human
relationships, the wine-house for intoxication and mystic
 revelation, the mosque for ostentatious impiety, the desert for
solitary wandering, the madhouse or prison cell for
intransigence and frenzy, the grave and its aftermath for
ultimate triumph or defeat. The ghazal universe is thus lled
with beings and objects so ‘pre-poeticized’ that they bear only
the most incidental relationship to their natural counterparts.22
The word ghazal itself means ‘amorous talk’, so it is not
surprising that love is its primary theme. The speaker often
expresses emotions of an unful lled longing and intense
mental anguish, mostly due to the beloved’s apathy and
cruelty. The recurring images of the burning candle, doleful
song, weeping eye, branded heart and torn garment re ect
the conditions of thwarted desire and frustration. The
beloved in the ghazal can be earthly or divine, both or
neither, that is, the poet may simply be making use of the
tradition rather than expressing any personal emotion. One
needs to guard against the temptation to read the ghazal as a
form of confessional autobiography and also resist the
tendency to always identify the speaker with the poet. It is,
therefore, quite probable that in celebrating drinking,
eulogizing drinkers, castigating the prohibitor and the
ascetic, and slighting religious rituals, Ghani is neither
expressing his personal likes and dislikes nor obliquely
alluding to the futility of religious observances, but merely
making use of the conventional tropes of the ghazal to create
poetry.
This caveat notwithstanding, it is nonetheless fruitful to
look at Ghani’s poetry in the light of whatever little can be
established about his personality. As discussed earlier,
Ghani’s extreme austerity and other-worldliness have been
reported by most literary historians as the de ning features
of his personality. It may not therefore be unjusti ed to
argue that while his treatment of love and wine was
probably determined by the long-established conventions of
ghazal writing, his obsession with themes such as poverty
and seclusion seems to have had its roots in his disposition
and personal experiences.
Again, although Ghani’s treatment of Su themes falls
well within the conventions of the Persian ghazal, there is an
unmistakable personal ring to many verses which allude to
Su ideas of self-discipline, fana, or self-annihilation, the
illusory nature of the world and the like. Mansur Hallaj (d.
922), the famous Su martyr celebrated by numerous
Persian poets, is mentioned quite a few times:
As soon as Mansur spun his
thread from the cotton of Oneness,
The rosary and the in del’s thread
became one.
Neither this abode I desire
nor the next one.
Like Mansur, in your love,
I desire one beyond both.
Mansur bore himself away
and left the gibbet behind.
Mark, the rose is ed but
the thorn abides its place.
Ghani admiringly refers to the famous Su practice of nafas
shumardan, or arresting one’s breath:
To rein in their selves
is the jihad of men.
 To keep a count of their
breaths the gnostics’ task.
And one can nd verses with deep mystical meaning
scattered here and there in his divan:
Alive none can know, Ghani,
even in a dream,
The solace that awaits
the heart in the grave.
In old age, Ghani, turn the
dust to clay with tears
And make your bent frame
the mould for your grave’s bricks.
For those who embrace
self-extinction, Ghani,
Await beneath the earth joys
unknown to those above it.
Despite these frequent allusions to mystical ideas it would
seem rather inappropriate to attach the appellation ‘Su
poet’ to Ghani or to call him simply a Su poet for various
reasons. Firstly, unlike most Su poets, who tend to resort to
the description of the physical world primarily to drive
home some spiritual lesson, Ghani does not always seek a
parallel between the physical and spiritual realms. Neither is
he irresistibly drawn to celebrate the inner state. Instead, an
overview of his whole poetic oeuvre reveals a consciousness
caught in an unresolved con ict which often takes the form
of pessimistic expression. This con ict is noticeable in the
poet’s simultaneous celebration of his humble state and
frequent complaints against his fate and fellowmen, who are
accused of apathy and indi erence.
 It is worthwhile to look for the causes that can help
explain the presence of such a strong pessimistic strain in
Ghani. It is reasonable to assume that the political and social
unrest of Kashmir that he was witness to was primarily
responsible for it. The political instability and subjugation by
foreign powers must have had a severely negative impact on
the collective consciousness of the Kashmiris. Already,
before the Mughal conquest in 1586, Kashmir was torn by
bloody internal strife between powerful chieftains and
di erent religious sects. With the Mughal annexation,
Kashmir lost its sovereignty and became yet another Mughal
territory exploited fully to ll the treasuries at Agra and
Delhi. The Mughals appointed numerous governors to the
newly won state, most of whom were ruthless with the
natives and adopted oppressive measures to extract di erent
kinds of taxes from them. There exist several accounts, both
in historical documents and literary texts, describing the
dismal condition of the people due to these oppressive
policies. Nadim Kashmiri, a contemporary of Ghani,
presented in a qasida, or panegyric, written for the emperor
Shah Jahan, an account of the humiliation Kashmiris faced
at the hands of Itiqad Khan, the governor of Kashmir. To add
further to their miseries, natural calamities in the form of
oods and famines had become routine. It was only natural
for Ghani to be deeply perturbed by these conditions and he
imbibed the general mood of gloom and dejection. A psyche
impinged by such awfully dismal spectacles was likely to
seek vent in expressions of fatalism and pessimism. If Ghani
seems too gloomy at times, it is because the conditions he
lived in o ered little reason for a brighter outlook. Perhaps
these external factors actually intensi ed a pre-existing
melancholic streak in him. And perhaps by saying that
severity is best answered with soft-heartedness, he advises
his people to tackle harshness with prudence:
With tenderness you can escape
the oppressors’ clutches.
Has the painter’s brush ever
come under the sword’s edge?
With softness we can save ourselves
from the tyrants’ grasp.
Unlike pearls, water droplets fear not
being strung into thread.
The following verses might as well be read as a telling
indictment of the way people were eeced:
No falcon have I seen
building a nest.
Picking on birds serves as a
substitute to gathering straw.
Our sustenance is fated to fall
to the others’ lot.
Like the millstone, our fortune
often takes reverse turns.
Like the needle we always
ee from being dressed.
Naked ourselves, we stitch
garments for others.
It was this general plight of the Kashmiris that Iqbal was to
bemoan in Payaam-e Mashriq:
 Alas! So much has he
inured himself to servility
That from tombstones
the Kashmiri carves out idols.
No lofty thought nds
place in his mind.
Oblivious to his own lot,
of himself ashamed.
Clad in silk is his master
from his toil.
He himself is draped in
a tattered shirt.
His eyes are bereft of
the vision that discerns.
His breast is bereft of
a restless heart.
Disconcerting though it may seem to the modern reader,
the strain of dejection nonetheless a ords poignancy to
Ghani’s verses:
Such desolation pours down from
the walls and doors, it seems
That the heavens have sketched
my house from the pallor of my face.
Beneath the earth lies the
abode of this dust-ridden one,
While the surface is full of
men seated aloft.
Ghani, I fear my misfortune
will a ict my trade
If ever I take up the scales
for a petty pro t.
 For how long would Ghani have
his breast riddled with poverty?
With the thread of his robe
he stitched his torn breast.
From the cold indi erence of the sky
I ee to ill luck.
May no one seek shade
in the wintry chill!
Nothing but remorse
does the world yield.
Turning the millstone
only chafes our hands.
Since poverty has come to inhabit my dwelling
The dust of hope has ed from this desolate abode.
It is not becoming to knock on others’ doors today
When hunger has arrived as a guest at mine.
Despite a substantial number of such verses in Ghani, it
would be fallacious to describe him as a poet only of despair
and gloom. Ghani celebrates all positive facets of life with
an unmistakable note of imaginative delight. He has a
penchant for concrete images through which he proclaims
his keen appreciation of the sensuous forms of beauty. If our
poet often bemoans his destitution or draws from the fast-
fading rose a lesson of life’s transience, he also rejoices in
describing spring, tracing the sweetness of honey to a sweet
lip the bee has stung, vividly describing the biting cold of
Kashmir’s winter and writing satirical verses on a barber.
It seems pertinent to conclude this introduction with a
passage from Iqbal’s celebrated work Javed Nama (1928),
where the spirit of Ghani appears as a harbinger of
deliverance from darkness and despair. In the course of his
heavenly journey, Zinda Rud, who represents Iqbal, nds
Ghani lamenting the state of his nation in these words:
O morning breeze, if you
pass over Geneva,
Carry a word from us
to the League of Nations.
‘The peasant, the eld, the river,
the garden, all have they sold.
They have sold a people and how
cheaply have they sold!’
The reference is to the infamous Treaty of Amritsar signed in
1846, when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was sold along
with its people by the British to the Dogra rulers. But soon
Ghani’s spirit predicts a future when Kashmir will regain the
glory and pride of the past. Ghani inspires Zinda Rud with
words that reveal his un inching faith in his people’s
determination to live with honour and dignity:
Do you think our soil
is bereft of spark?
Look into your heart
with a keener eye.
Wherefrom has passion
and fervour come?
Wherefrom has this breath
of the spring’s breeze come?
It has come from the
very wind which
Bestows colour and scent
on our lofty mountains.
After a few lines he continues:
Your cry is a bell
waking up the caravans.
Why do you despair of
the people of this place?
Their breasts do not carry
dead hearts.
Their sparks are still
alive under the ice.
Wait till you see that
without the trumpet’s blast
A whole nation will rise to
life from their graves.
Grieve not, O you gifted
with the vision.
Exhale the scorching breath
to consume the dry and the wet.
Under this turquoise sky
many a city has been torched
By the re that exudes from
the dervish’s heart.
A kingdom is imsier
than a bubble.
It can be blown up
by a single breath.
It is the song that fashions
the destiny of nations.
A song can make or
mar nations.
Though men’s hearts are
trans xed by your lancet,
None has discerned your
true worth yet.
Notes that emanate from you
are a poet’s song,
But what you say goes
well beyond poetry.
Raise a fresh tumult
in Paradise.
Sing a song of drunkenness
in Paradise.
Mufti Mudasir Farooqi
 Ghazals

1
junūnī kū ki az qaid-e khirad bīrūn kasham pā rā
kunam zanjīr-e pāye khwīshtan dāmān-e śaĥrā rā
ba bazm-e may parastān muĥtasib khush ‘izzatī dārad
ki chūn āyad ba majlis shīshah khālī mī kunad jā rā
agar shuhrat havas dārī asīr-e dām-e ‘uzlat shav
ki dar parvāz dārad gūshah gīrī nām-e ‘anqā rā
ba bazm-e may parastān sarkashī bar āq nih zāhid
ki mīrīzand mastān bī muĥābā khūn-e mīna rā
shikast az har dar-u-dīvār mībārad magar gardūn
zi rang-e chahraye mā rīkht rang-e khānaye mā rā
1
O for a frenzy that could free
me from the bonds of reason
And chain my feet to the
edge of the desert!
In the company of wine lovers
the prohibitor enjoys high esteem,
For on his arrival goblets
are instantly emptied.1
If you desire fame, become
a prisoner of solitude’s snare,
For seclusion is called phoenix
when it soars high.2
Ascetic, shelve your arrogance
in the drinkers’ assembly.
Look! Drunk, how recklessly they
spill the ask’s blood.3
Such desolation pours down from
the walls and doors, it seems
That the heavens have sketched
my house from the pallor of my face.
nadārad rah ba gardūn rūh tā bāshad nafas dar tan
rasāyī nīst dar parvāz murgh-e rishtah dar pā rā
Ghanī rūz-e siyāh-e pīr-e Kan‘ān rā tamāsha kun
ki nūr-e dīdah ash raushan kard chashm-e Zuleikhā rā
2
mayār ay bakht bahr-e gharq-e mā dar shūr daryā rā
par-e māhī magar dān bādbān-e kashtiye mā rā
libās-e mā sabuksārān ta‘alluq bar namī tābad
buvad hamchūn ĥabāb az bakhyah khāli pairahan mā rā
buvad az shu‘la-e āwāz-e qulqul bazm-e may raushan
sarat gardam makun khāmūsh sāqi sham‘-e mīnā rā
Trapped in the body
the soul cannot ascend.
With feet tied what bird
could take ight?
Ghani, behold the darkened days
of the old man of Canaan
As the light of his eyes now
illumines those of Zuleikha.4
2
To drown me, O Fate,
raise no storm in the sea.
Remember, my boat’s sail
is but the n of a sh.
Too imsy to bear ties are
the apparels of the burdenless.
Like an air bubble my robes
are without a stitch.
The ame of gurgling wine irradiates
the wine gathering.
My life is yours, Saki,
let not the sparkling ask fall silent!5
dam-e jān bakhsh-e ū tā rang-e ĥairat rīkht dar ‘ālam
zi mihr-e āyinah dar pīsh-e nafas dīdam masīĥā rā
agar lab az sukhan gūyī farūbandīm jā dārad
ki nabvad az nazākat tāb-e bastan-e ma‘naye mā rā
Ghanī sāghar bakaf Jamshīd pīsh-e mayfarūsh āmad
ki shāyad dar bahāye bādah gīrad mulk-e dunyā rā
3
tihī kun ay dil az parvardaye khud zūd pahlū rā
ki ākhir nāfah tā kushtan buvad hamrāh-e āhū rā
nagardad shi‘r-e man mashhūr tā jān dar tanam bāshad
ki ba‘d az marg-e āhū nāfah bīrūn mīdihad bū rā
No sooner had his life-infusing breath
held the world spellbound
Than I saw the messianic breath
brought to the mirror’s test.6
How apt if I seal my lips
from saying verse!
For the subtlety of my meanings
lies well beyond them.
Cup in hand, Ghani, Jamshed
came to the wine seller.
Perchance in lieu of wine,
he asks for the whole world.7
3
Shun fast what you have
nurtured, O heart!
The musk-bag clings to
the deer until it is slain.8
Fame eluded my verse till the soul
was the body’s prisoner.
The fragrant musk found release
once the deer was slain.
zi āsīb-e śabā āsūdah tā śubĥ-e abad bāshad
kunad sham‘ az par-e parvānah gar ta‘vīz-e bāzū rā
ba narmī jān zi dast-e sakht gīrān mītavān burdan
bazīr-e tīgh hargiz kas nagīrad khāmaye mū rā
kunad dar pīsh-e ān pāye nigārīn sajdahā zulfash
balī karī bih az ātash parastī nīst Hindū rā
falak dar gardish ast az bahr-e khwāb-e bakht-e nāsāzam
buvad dar jumbish-e gahwārah rāĥat i -e badkhū rā
Ghanī az sustiye āli‘ shikast uftad babāzāram
paye saudā bakaf gīram agar sang-e tarāzū rā
Safe from the curse of breeze
will it be till the morn of eternity,
If from the moth’s wing
the candle fashions an amulet.9
With tenderness you can escape
the oppressors’ clutches.
Has the painter’s brush ever
come under the sword’s edge?10
Her decked vermilion feet,
his endless prostrations.
What act, for a Hindu,
can excel the worship of re!
The skies are in motion
to put my ill luck to sleep.
The rocking cradle brings
comfort to the fretful child.11
Ghani, I fear my misfortune
will a ict my trade,
If ever I take up the scales
for a petty pro t.
4
tavānad śūratī dādan shabīh-e ān parī rū rā
musavvir gar kunad az bāl-e ‘anqā khāmaye mū rā
hizarān ma‘anaye bārīk bāshad bayt-e abrū rā
ba ghair az mūshigāfān kas na fahmad ma‘naye ū rā
mayān-e kushtgān sar az khajālat bar namīdārīm
tihī tā chūn kamān kardīm az tīr-e tū pahlū rā
magar naqlī zi rūye nuskhaye ĥusn-e tū bardārad
ki mah imshab kashīd az hālah jadwal śafĥaye rū rā
Ghanī tā chand bāshad sīna chāk az dast-e ‘uryāni
ba tār-e pairahan dūzīd chāk-e sīnaye ū rā
4
The likeness of that fairy face
the painter can capture,
Only if he makes his brush
from the feathers of the phoenix.12
Thousands of meanings lie hidden
in the brow-shaped couplet.
Unfathomable to all
but the hair-splitters.
Shamed, I did not raise
my head amidst the slain.
Until, like the bow, I rid
my breast of your arrow.13
Perhaps it has copied the sketch
of your beautiful visage:
Tonight the moon’s halo
seems drawn from a portrait.
For how long would Ghani have
his breast riddled with poverty?
With the thread of his robe
he stitched his torn breast.
5
zi rūye māh siyāhī ba nūr-e māh naraft
nayāmad ast ba kārī kamāl-e khwīsh marā
kasī ba pursish-e aĥvāl-e man namī āyad
ba ghair-e khandah ki āyad ba ĥāl-e khwīsh marā
zi ghunchah takyah chū shabnam ba zīr-e sar na niham
ki bih zi bālish-e par hast bāl-e khwīsh marā
basān-e sham‘ ki uftad zi pambaye khud ba gudāz
vabāl-e gardan-e khud gasht bāl-e khwīsh marā
ba gulshan-e digrī chashm-e man namī uftad
gul-e murād shiguft az sifāl-e khwīsh marā
5
The moon’s lustre cannot
remove blackness from its face.
Alas, my talent stood me
in no good stead!14
None comes to ask after me,
Except my own laugh
that comes to mock me. www.kashmirsufis.wordpress.com

Like a dewdrop I choose

no rosebud to recline.
Better than the feathered
pillow is my own wing.
Like the candle consumed
by its own wick,
My neck was undone
by its own wing.
I gaze not in envy
at the other’s garden.
My desire’s rose
blooms in my own clay.
6
chashm-e mā raushan shud az khāk-e dar-e maikhānahā
rīkhtand az surmah gūya rang-e īn kāshānahā
sa‘ ī bahr-e rāĥat-e hamsāygān kardan khush ast
bishinvad gūsh az barāye khwāb-e chashm afsānahā
barham az sargarmiye mā khurd bazm-e maykashān
ātashī gashtīm u uftādīm dar maykhānahā
dar shab-e zulf-e tū khwāb-e khush naśībam kay shavad
khār mīrūyad zi pahlūyam ba sān-e shānahā
ātash-e dāgh-e junūn az sang-e i ān mīkashand
yak nafas ghā l nayand az kār-e khud divānahā
6
My eyes owe their vision
to the dust of tavern doors.
As if these abodes were raised
on antimony.15
Noble indeed it is to strive
for the neighbour’s comfort.
The ear endures a hundred tales
that the eye may sleep.
Amidst the drinkers
our revelry raised a tumult.
Metamorphosed into ames,
we consumed countless taverns.
Entangled in your black tresses,
I pine for a restful sleep.
Like the teeth of the comb,
thorns issue from my breast.
To burnish the scar of their madness,
they draw the spark from urchins’ stones.
Not for a moment are the frenzied
forgetful of their duty.16
raft ‘umram dar gharībi bar bisāt-e rūzgār
garchi hamchūn muhraye shatranj dāram khānahā
ba‘d-e murdan gar khūrad afsūs ān sarkash chi sūd
mī gazad angusht sham‘ az mātam-e parvānahā
dāyim az mastī Ghanī dar raqś chūn dūlāb bāsh
gar nabāshad may tavān kard āb dar paimānahā
7
mā bulbulān-e buland nasāzīm khānah rā
khush kardah-īm khānaye yak āshiyānāh rā
sangīn dil ast har ki ba zāhir mulāyam ast
pinhān darūn-e panbah nigar panbah dānah rā
An eternal exile
on the plane of existence,
Though like a draught
I have many homes.
What does it avail if
the heedless one repents after my death?
Does not the candle bite its nger
in grief for the moth?17
Like a waterwheel keep dancing
in rapture, Ghani.
If wine be scarce,
ll the goblets with water.
7
We, the nightingales of loftiness,
despise building nests.
One abode alone
a ords us joy.18
Stone-hearted is he
who appears soft from without.
Behold the cotton seed
nestled inside the u .
shud sang-e āstānaye dīn har butī ki būd
kā r biyā u sajdah kun īn āstānah rā
rūzī ki gul zi bāgh baghārat barad khizān
bulbul ba bād dih sabad-e āshiyānāh rā
andīshah gar zi tangiye gūrat buvad Ghanī
dar zindagī zi khāk bar āvar khazānah rā
8
shud khatm bar hadīs.-e tū ākhir bayān-e mā
bāshad nigīn-e nām-e tū muhr-e dahān-e mā
tar hamchū āsiyā nashud az āb nān-e mā
az tishnagī ast khushk zabān dar dahān-e mā
Transmuted into a shrine’s threshold
is every idol of the past.
In del, come and bow before it.19
The day autumn plunders
the rose from the garden,
Nightingale, give up
your nest to the storm.
If the narrowness of your grave
you fear, Ghani,
To give away the treasures
bring them out when alive.20
8
Your description puts
an end to all narration.
Your precious name becomes
the seal of my lips.
My loaf of bread stays
dry like the watermill,
Parched like my tongue
inside my mouth.
āgah nashud abīb zi dard-e nihān-e mā
īn nab-e ma khamūsh tar ast az zabān-e mā
gūyī ki dar tannūr-e falak qah-e haizum ast
tā ishtihā nasūkht nashud pukhta nān-e mā
az baski vasf-e chashm-e siyāh-e tu kardah īm
gardīd mīl-e surmah zabān dar dahān-e mā
az śaidgah-e dahar nagashtīm nā umīd
zāgh
mūye safīd-e māst hamah gard-e āsiyā
shud qūt-e āsiyāye falak ustukhān-e mā.abīb zi dard-e nihān-e
mā
The physician failed to catch
the ailment within.
The tongue was silent,
the pulse even more so.
The furnace of the sky was
short of rewood.
To bake my bread it
stokes itself with my desire.21
Engrossed such in praising
your dark eyes,
The tongue in my mouth has
turned a kohl stick.
The world’s hunting ground
still holds a promise for me.
Searching for a prey,
my bow might hunt itself.
Scattered around the millstone
are my white strands.
Grains to the sky’s revolving mill
are my bones.
kas rā zi dām-e śuĥbat-e mardum najāt nīst
‘anqā ast gūshah gīr Ghanī dar zamān-e mā
9
bī nishāni dārad āzād az balā vārastah rā
dām bāshad naqsh-e pāye khwīsh śaid-e jastah rā
dar mukarrar bastan-e mazmūn-e rangīn luf nīst
kam dihad rang ar kasī bandad ĥināye bastah rā
daf‘ shud vasvās-e khāir az namāz-e bā huzūr
mā badast-e bastah vā kardīm qu -e bastah rā
bī tū har shab tā saĥar dārad Ghanī sūz u gudāz
sham‘-e bālīn shāhid-e ĥālast īn dil khastah rā
The snare of men’s company
spares none.
Rare as a phoenix, Ghani,
is a recluse is now.
9
Leave no trail and
escape misfortune.
The footprints of a runaway
game become its trap.
An oft-repeated colourful
theme looks bland.
Faded indeed is the colour
of used henna.
Deep prayer checks
the wandering mind.
Many locks are unlocked
by locked hands.
From dusk to dawn every night,
Ghani burns for you.
Witness to my heartache
is the candle by my pillow.
10
safar chigūnah kunī az dayār-e khāir hā
ki dāman-e tū bigīrad ghubār-e khāir hā
zi bazm-e may buru ay muĥtasib ki dastārat
chu panbaye sar-e mīnāst bār-e khāir hā
chū mīl-e surmah bar āmad zi chashm-e jānān guft
ki sair-e maykadah shūyad ghubār-e khāir hā
11
jān rā ba kūye dūst ravān mīkunīm mā
ya‘nī ki kār-e ‘ishq ba jān mīkunīm mā
murib gar ārzūye tū faryād-e mā buvad
mānand-e nay ba dīdah ghān mīkunīm mā
10
How can you come out of
the mesh of thoughts?
Clutching at your hem
are they in profusion.
Leave the wine assembly,
prohibitor, for your turban
Weighs upon my thoughts
like the stopper of the decanter.22
Coming out of the beloved’s eye
the kohl stick remarked:
‘A stroll through the tavern
wipes away the dust of thoughts.’
11
Life itself we send forth
into love’s street,
And thus we perform
the duty of love.
Minstrel, if we too were to sing
of the heart’s desire,
Like the ute we too would
give vent through the eye.
mashhūr dar savād-e jahān az sukhan shudīm
hamchūn qalam safar ba zabān mīkunīm mā
natavān chū zāhid az rāh-e khushkī ba Ka‘ba raft
kashtī ba baĥr-e bādah ravān mīkunīm mā
mārā chū sham‘ marg buvad khāmushī Ghanī
izhār-e zindagī ba zabān mīkunīm mā
12
yak saĥar az daram ay davlat-e bīdār biyā
rūzam ay māh shudah bītū shab-e tār biyā
ĥalqaye dar bingar rakhnaye dīwār bibīn
chashm dar rāh-e tū dārad dar-u-dīwār biyā
Round the world my verse
spreads my fame.
Like a pen, I journeyed
astride my tongue.
To Kaaba, the arid path
of the ascetic we shun.
And set sail our boat in
the sea of wine.23
Silence, as for the candle,
is death for us, Ghani.
Only by the tongue can
we display our existence.
12
O wakeful bounty, one morn
to my door, do come!
O moon, whose absence
darkens my days, do come!
Behold the knocker on the
door and the crevice in the wall.
The door and the wall of my
eyes await you, do come.24
‘uzr dar rāh-e vafā pīsh nakhwāhad raftan
bar sar-e ‘uzr mayā bar sar-e raftār biyā
13
i‘timadī nīst bar gardūn ki dar vaqt-e binā
rīkht mi‘mār-e qazā rang az shafaq īn khānah rā
tab‘-e ān shā‘ir ki shud bā arz-e duzdī āshnā
ma‘naye bīgānah dānad ma‘naye bīgānah rā
chashm-e ‘āshiq raushan ast az partav-e dīdār-e dūst
sham‘-e nakhl-e vādi-e aiman buvad parvānah rā
‘āshiqān rā mīshavad bakht-e siyāh zil-e humā
shu‘la bar sar afsar-e shāhi buvad parvānah rā
Excuses shall not traverse
the path of love.
Shun them, make haste,
and do come.
13
Unpredictable are the rmaments
for at their creation’s time,
The Designer of Fate drew
their sketch from the horizons.25
The poet whose nature
inclines to stealing
Remains obtuse to the novel
meaning he steals.
The eyes of the lover are illumined
by the beloved’s re ection.
The candle becomes a tree
of refuge for the moth.26
For lovers, black fortune
becomes the huma’s shadow.
For the moth, the ame
a kingly crown.27
14
har ki pāband-e vatan shud mīkashad āzār hā
pāye gul andar chaman dāyim pur ast az khār hā
hīchgah az sīnaye śad chāk-e mā yādī nakard
garchi bastam rishtah bar angusht-e sūzan bārhā
tā ba rūye gul nayaftad chashm-e bīrūn māndgān
bast bulbul āshiyān dar rakhnaye dīwār hā
zān lab-e mīgūn Ghanī rā bādaye dih sar bamuhar
kaz sarash bīrūn ravad bād-e hamah pindār hā
15
tāk shud zanjīr-e pāyam tā kashīdam bādah rā
‘āqibat az dast dādam dāman-e sajjādah rā
14
Whoever holds rmly to
his soil bears a iction.
The feet of the rose are
ever fraught with thorns.
Not once did it think
of my myriad-holed breast,
Though I too have threaded
the needle many times.
Lest strangers cast their
devouring gaze on the rose,
In the wall’s crevice has the
nightingale built its nest.
From those ruby lips pass,
Ghani, a sealed draught.
For he has thrown all
discretion to the wind.
15
I consumed so much wine
that my feet’s chains turned into vine.
At last from my hand I threw
away the prayer mat.
sāyah mīgūyad ba gūsh-e naqsh-e pā dar har qadam
hīchkas dastī nagīrad bar zamīn uftādah rā
har ki būd az may parastān shud murīd-e man Ghanī
tā bar āb afgandam az dāman-e tar sajjādah rā
16
hilāl nīst ki nākhun zadast bar dil-e charkh
nivishtah miśra‘-e abrū-e ū ba āb-e ilā
khalal pazīr shud az zabt-e giryah nūr-e nigāh
zi āstīn gilah dārad chirāg-e dīdaye mā
‘ibādati ba jahān
bih zi khāksāri nīst bih az vuū-e ‘azīzān buvad tayammum-e
mā
The shadow whispers into
the footprint’s ears:
‘None holds the hand
of those fallen into dust.’
Ghani, every wine lover has
become my disciple since
In contrition I ung the
prayer mat into the sea of wine.
16
Not a crescent, but a ngernail
engraved in the sky’s heart.
The hemistich of her eyebrow
written in golden ink.
Sti ed tears blur the eye’s vision.
The lamp of my eye complains
of my sleeve.28
The humility of dust-dwellers
excels all worship.
Dust cleanses us more than
the ablution does others.
ba bakht-e tīrah gurīzam zi sard mihriye charkh
mabād sāyah nishīn kas ba mausim-e sarmā
17
ba bahr-e pur khar-e ‘ishq chūn kushāyim chashm
ki chūn ĥabāb nigāhi kunad kharāb marā
chu man ba baĥr-e tajarrud kas āshnā nabvad
yakī ast pairahan-u-pūst chūn ĥabāb marā
18
śafāi-e ĥusn-e butān mī tarāvad az dil
ba āb-e āyinah gūyī sirishtah shud gil-e mā
chunān ba yād-e sar-e zulf-e ū giriftārīm
ki ghair-e khānaye zanjīr nīst manzil-e mā
From the cold indi erence of the sky
I ee to ill luck.
May no one seek shade
in the wintry chill!
17
Opening the eye in
love’s tempestuous sea
Brought me to naught
like a bubble.
No one fathoms the sea of
nakedness like me.
Like the bubble my skin
and garment are one.
18
The idol’s limpid beauty
permeates my heart.
As if my clay were
kneaded with crystal water.
Captivated by the memory
of her tresses,
I have no destination save
the rings of those chains.
shudīm khāk zi bas dar khayāl-e ‘āri-e ū
sazad gar gul-e khurshīd rūyad az gil-e mā
19
mā rā az āftāb-e qayāmat Ghanī chi bāk
dūzakh tar ast az ‘arq-e in ‘āl-e mā
20
jahān tamām musakhkhar zi jām shud Jam rā
bigīr jām ki khwāhī girift ‘ālam rā
Ghanī chirā śilaye shi‘r az kasī gīrad
hamīn bas ast ki shi‘rash girift ‘ālam rā
The thought of her cheek
has turned me to clay.
Be tting that a sun ower
grows out of my soil.
19
What fear of the Resurrection Day’s
sun can I have,
When hell is drenched by
the sweat of my humility?29
20
The whole world lies
in Jamshed’s cup.
Seize the cup if you
desire the world.
Why should Ghani seek the
reward of verse from anyone?
It is enough that the world
seeks his verses.
21
chirā kham gashtah mī gardand pīrān-e jahān dīdah
magar dar khāk mī jūyand ayyām-e javānī rā
22
ma‘nī az tab‘-e Ghanī sar natavānad pīchīd
bastah dādand ba ū rūz-e azal mamūn rā
23
ba manzil mīrasanad kashtiye may kārvānī rā
barad yakdam azīn ‘ālam ba ān ‘ālam jahānī rā
24
sukhan muhr-e khamūshi bar namī dārad zabānash rā
ki lab chūn ghunchah pinhānast az tangī dahānash rā
21
Pray, why are the backs
of old men bent?
Are they searching for their
lost youth in the dust?
22
Meaning cannot refuse
submission to Ghani’s genius.
Poetic themes were fashioned
for him at the dawn of creation.
23
The boat of wine steers the
caravan to its destination,
Ferrying one from this world
to that in no time.
24
Speech cannot break the seal www.kashmirsufis.wordpress.com
of silence from her tongue.
Like a rosebud her lip lies
hidden in her mouth.
25
khusham ki u‘f chunān kard rūshinās marā
ki chashm-e āyinah migān kunad qayās marā
26
zi dard-e ‘ishq a‘īf ast baski paikar-e mā
shavad ba tīgh-e girīban judā zi tan sar-e mā
27
tishnaye pā būs-e khud zīn bīsh mugzār āb rā
ay nihāl-e bāgh-e ĥusn az khāk bardār āb rā
28
biyā bulbul bibīn dar pardaye gul āftābī rā
chirā az sādgī maĥbūb-e khud kardī naqābī rā
25
Happy that weakness
made me so conspicuous
That the mirror’s eye
took me for an eyelash!
26
The pangs of love have
so enfeebled my frame
That the garment’s edge
can sever my head.
27
How much more will water
thirst for a kiss at your feet?
O sapling of the garden of beauty,
raise it from the dust.
28
Come, O nightingale, behold
a sun veiled in a rose.
Why, out of modesty,
do you hold your veil dear?
29
hamchūn sūzan dāyim az pūshish gurīzānīm mā
jāmah bahr-e khalq mī dūzīm u ‘uryānīm mā
30
tā bakht-e vāgūn shud mi‘mār-e khānaye mā
gardīd chūn kamān kaj dīvār-e khānaye mā
31
ātash-e may tīz sāzad shu‘la-e āvāz rā
bar kadūye bādah bāyad bast tār-e sāz rā
32
khammār śāf az durd bahr-e tū kard may rā
āvard shauq-e la‘lat birūn zi pardah may rā
 29
Like the needle we always
ee from being dressed.
Naked ourselves, we stitch
garments for others.
30
Since inverted fortune has
become the builder of my abode,
The walls of my house are
bent like a bow.
31
The spark of wine sharpens
the ame of sound.
Be tting that the lute be
tied to the wine gourd.
32
For you the vintner
cleared the wine of its dregs.
Desiring your ruby lips the
wine threw o its veil.
33
zūr-e may tā hast kay uftādah mī bāshīm mā
hamchūn khum dar gūr ham istādah mī bāshīm mā
34
tābūt-e murdaye dūsh hushyār kard mā rā
pāye ba khwāb raftah bīdār kard mā rā
35
khwīsh rā bā ki bisanjīm Ghanī dar sabukī
nīst juz sāyaye khud sang-e tarāzū mā rā
 36
ĥusn-u-jamāl-e zāti ast dushman-e zīb-e ‘āri
surmah ghubār-e khāir ast chashm-e siyāh-e yār rā
33
How can we fall while
the e ect of wine remains?
Like the wine jar we shall
stand erect even in the grave.30
34
The co n of yesterday’s dead
brought me to my senses.
The feet gone to sleep
woke me up.
35
To whom should I compare
myself in lightness, Ghani?
Apart from my shadow
I have no other measure.
36
Natural beauty is an
enemy of embellishment.
The kohl weighs heavy
upon her dark eyes.
37
sayyād-e mā chū tarkash pur tīr mī kunad
dar yak qafas asīr kunad śad parindah rā
38
sham‘-e fānūs nayam līk zi bī sāmānī
ghair-e dīvār-e sarā pairahanī nīst marā
 39
az rah-e vārastagi paivastah hamchūn girdbād
khānah bar dūsham namī bāshad gham-e manzil marā
40
pairav-e mā shav ki hamchūn khāmah dar rāh-e sukhan
pay ba ma‘nī mītavān burdan zi naqsh-e pāye mā
37
Our hunter lls his
quiver with arrows,
And a hundred birds
he captures in a single cage.
38
Though not a candle in
the lantern yet, like it,
I own no garments but
the walls of my house.
39
Like the whirlwind, I am
ever free from bonds.
Abode on back, I have
no worries of settling down.
40
In the path of composition
be my disciple, for like the pen’s trace,
My footprints may lead
you to the heart of meaning.
41
śāhib-e sukhan najumbad az bahr-e qūt az jā
dāyim ba khānaye khud rūzī rasad zabān rā
 42
shab-e rāq-e tū ay āftāb-e ‘ālamtāb
labāb ast chū gardūn zi dāgh sīnaye mā
43
tā dam az hamsariye zulf-e tū zad
mīgazad mār zabān-e khud rā
44
parvanah gū bimīr zi ghairat ki sham‘ rā
raushan kunand khalq ba khāk-e mazār-e mā
41
From his place the poet
moves not for sustenance.
In its cavern is the
tongue provided for!
42
The night of separation,
O world-illumining sun!
Like the rmament my breast
is teeming with scars!
43
That it could boast of
matching your tresses,
Into two the serpent
split its tongue.
44
Tell the moth to perish out
of shame, for the candle
Is lit by men from
the dust of our graves.
 45
tā tavānī ‘āshiq-e ma‘shūq-e harjāyī mashav
mīkunad khurshīd sargardān gul-e khurshīd rā
46 www.kashmirsufis.wordpress.com

marg gavārā shavad mūy chū gardad safīd

lazzat-e digar buvad khwāb-e dam-e śubĥrā
47
mulāyam mīshavad dar guftgū har kas ki kāmil shud
ki dāyim pambah bāshad dar dahān mināye pur may rā
48
jāmam ba ghair-e kāsaye zānūye kr nīst
bāshad khāyal-e tāzah sharāb-e kuhan marā
45
Make not the ckle one
your beloved.
A wanderer does the sun
make of the sun ower.
46
When hair turns white
death becomes bearable.
The dream at dawn yields
a pleasure of its own.
47
An accomplished man
is soft-spoken.
Cotton plugs the mouth
of a lled ask.
48
I know of no goblet save my
frame cupped in re ection.
Every new thought becomes
old wine for me.31
49
ba chashm-e kam mabīn dar nāmaye a‘māl-e mā zāhid
ki mībārad azīn abr-e siyāh bārān-e raĥmat hā
50
az sharm-e taubah dar ‘araqam kū sharāb-e nāb
bāyad matā‘-e tar shudah rā dād āftāb
raftīm sūye yār u nadīdīm rūye yār
mānand-e rahravī ki ravad rū ba āftāb.
tā kay farīb-e hastiye mauhūm mī khūrī
natavān chū ‘aks-e āyīnah shud gharq dar sarāb
dar ĥashr shud bar ahl-e gunāh abr-e raĥmatī
andākhtam chū dāman-e tar rā ba āftāb
49
Slight not, O ascetic, my
blotted record of deeds.
Rains of mercy pour forth
from these black clouds.32
50
Soaked in shame over repentance;
pray, where is pure wine?
Things that are drenched
need the blazing sun.33
I marched towards my love
but could not see her face,
Like the wayfarer
who walks into the sun.
How long will you be deceived
by the world’s illusion?
Like a mirror image, a mirage
can drown none.
The cloud of mercy shall cover
the sinners on Resurrection Day.
For I have thrown my drenched
garments into the sun.
khush davlatī ast faqr ki dar kunj-e inzivā
farsh-e nay ast sāyah u farrāsh āftāb.
har kas ki dād tan ba balā ayman az balā ast
vīran kujā zi mauj shavad khānaye ĥabāb
gar khāmah rā zi kām bar āyad zabān chi dūr
shud bahr-e shi‘r khushk tar az jadwal-e kitāb
tā bar nayāmad ast zi kāmam zabān Ghanī
charkh-e siyāh kāsah chū kilkam nadād āb
51
ādam-e khāki zi khāmī dārad az may ijtināb
kūzaye gil pukhtah chūn gardad namī tarsad zi āb
Pleasant is the wealth of poverty,
for in the corner of seclusion,
Shade is my reed mat and
my attendant, the sun.34
He who surrenders to calamity
has no fear from it.
How can the wave destroy
the bubble’s house?
What wonder if my pen’s
tongue drops out of its mouth?
The sea of verse has turned
drier than a book’s sketch.
Until my tongue hangs out
from my mouth, Ghani,
Like my pen, the sky’s
black bowl pours not a drop.
51
Abstinence is the trait
of unripe men.
The cup fully baked
has no fear of water.
har ki dar rāh-e sabuksāri qadam zad chūn ĥabāb
hīch jā pāyash na laghzad gar ravad bar rūye āb
dukhtar-e raz az nigāh-e garm uftād dar ĥijāb
kāsh uftādī gil-e abrī ba chashm-e āftāb.
az khajālat bar namī dārad chū nargis sar zi pīsh
har kirā faśl-e bahārān nīst dar sāghar sharāb
zāhid-e bī ābrū gar bar lab-e daryā ravad
mīshavad mauj-e ĥaśīr az zuhd-e khushkash mauj-e āb
sard mihrī baski dar dilhāye mardum jā girift
rūye garm az kas namī bīnam ghair az āftāb
He who is light-footed on
his path, like a bubble,
Walks sure-footed on
the water’s surface.
From its ery gaze the daughter
of vine hid behind the veil.
Would that a sore of a cloud
a icts the sun’s eye!35
Like the narcissus his
head droops out of shame,
Whose cup is empty of wine
even in the spring.
If the ascetic, lacking self-esteem,
chances to go to the riverbank,
His arid asceticism will dry up
the wave like a mat.
Such cold indi erence has
found place in men’s hearts,
I see no warm face
except the blazing sun.
tā Ghanī kard ijtināb az mayparastān bīkhudī
gasht ‘aql-e mā ba rang-e nashah pinhān dar sharāb.
52
zi bīm-e hijr u umīd-e viśāl-e ān maĥbūb
gudākht khāmah u bālīd dar kafam maktūb
khiāb-e mūye Zuleikhā magar kunad Yūsuf
ki burdah ast siyāhī zi dīdaye Ya‘qūb
havāye gūshah nishīnī agar pazīrad rang
tavān basan-e kamān sākht khānaye yak chūb
Ghanī chū śiĥn-e chaman dar bahār rangīn ast
shabīh-e khāmaye naqqāsh mīshavad jārūb
Ghani, since drunkenness has
bid farewell to wine lovers,
My reason, like intoxication, has
hid itself in wine.
52
A icted by her separation,
the pen consumes away.
Expecting her union,
the letter blooms in my hand.36
No wonder that Yusuf
dyes Zuleikha’s tresses:
He has stolen blackness
from Yaqub’s eyes.37
If the desire for seclusion
takes a strong hold of you,
Like the bow an abode can
be carved from a single wood.
In spring, Ghani, the garden
blooms with myriad colours.
And the gardener’s broom
resembles the painter’s brush.
53
nafas-e man shudah az sūkhtgī khākistar
gar shavad āyīnah raushan zi dam-e man chi ‘ajab
54
mia am bar mia az jūsh-e ĥalāvat chaspīd
dīdam az baski ba khwāb ān lab-e shīrīn imshab
55
dar namakzār-e savād-e Hind shādābī kam ast
gar darānja sabzaye bāshad zi tukhm-e ādam ast
gulshan-e Kashmīr rā imsāl shādābī kam ast
gar gil-e abrī numāyān ast ānham bī nam ast
53
Burning, my soul has
turned into ashes.
What wonder if my
breath polishes the mirror!38
54
The ardour of sweetness
glued my lids together.
Tonight I dreamt of
that honeyed lip!
55
The brackish plains of India
are bereft of any freshness.
Verdure there, if any, grows
from the seeds of men.
The garden of Kashmir too
lacks verdure this year.
If a speck of cloud appears,
that too is bereft of moisture.
az badanhā dar havāye garm mī jūshad ‘araq
gar buvad khāk-e raūbat khīz khāk-e ādam ast
dar jahān natavān nishān az sīr
chashmī yāftan chashmaye khurshīd ham muĥtāj-e āb-e
shabnam ast
gard-e gham shūyad zi dilhā giryah dar bazm-e simā‘
hast dar faryād chashm-e nay ki khāli az nam ast
56
mūye sar kardam safīd ammā khayālat dar sar ast
akhgarī pinhān tah-e īn tūdaye khākistar ast
az khadangat murgh-e dil pahlū ba tarkash mīzanad
kaz darūn yakdastah paikān vaz birūn musht-e par ast
Hot winds drain sweat
from men’s bodies.
The only clay exuding
moisture is the clay of men.
It is hard to come across
a satiated eye in the world.
The sun’s eye is ever thirsty
for a dewdrop.
In the musical gathering tears cleanse
the dust of grief from hearts.
Complaining of dryness, the ute’s
eye raises laments.
56
White-haired, yet I
harbour thoughts of you.
In the heap of ashes
lives a spark.
Your arrows have turned
the heart into a quiver.
Arrowheads inside and
tufts of feathers hanging out.
kas zi fai-e baĥr-e jūdash dar jahān maĥrūm nīst
pusht-e māhī pur diram musht-e śadaf pur gauhar ast
bastah shud har chand dar yak baĥr ma‘a hāye tar
ma‘naye mardum ĥabāb u ma‘naye man gauhar ast
mī kunad khurshīd u mah āyīnah dārī sāyah rā
bā siyāh bakhtān butān rā iltifāt-e dīgar ast
57
pīr shud zāhid u az rāz-e darūn bī khabar ast
qad-e kham gashtaye ū ĥalqaye bīrūn-e dar ast
ĥairatam kusht ki chūn az sar-e ‘ushāq guzasht
āb-e shamshīr ki khūn rīz marā tā kamar ast
All partake of His sea of bounty.
With gold coins the sh is decked
and the oyster holds a pearl.
Though the sea harbours
meanings in plenty,
Mine is a pearl,
theirs a bubble.
The black-fortuned are
especially favoured by gods.
The sun and the moon are
ever attendant upon the shade.
57
Aged, yet the ascetic knows
not the inner secret.
His bent gure like the
knocker outside the door.
Wonder struck me dead
as the blood-spilling sword
Passed over the lovers’ heads
to reach my waist.
zihr-e chashm-e tū chunān kard sarāyat dar man
ki marā pūst ba tan sabz chū bādam-e tar ast
nāvak-e nāz-e tū dar dīdaye man jā dārad
tīr-e migān-e turā mardum-e chashmam sipar ast
har ki pursīd zi Ghanī vajh-e shikast-e rangam
dānam az sang dilī hāye butān bī khabar ast
58
tā surmah dān siyāhiye chashm-e tū dīdah ast
dar chasm-e khwīsh mīl zi khijlat kashīdah ast
sūz-e dilam chū sham‘ ba jāye rasīdah ast
kaz tukhm-e ashk-e man gul-e ātash damīdah ast
Into my frame has your
poisonous glance sunk,
And turned my skin green
as a fresh almond.
My eye fears not the
darts of your charm.
Its pupil becomes the shield
for the arrows of your lashes.
He who asks you, Ghani,
the cause of your pallor
Knows not, I know,
how stone-hearted idols are.
58
Since the kohl vial has
glimpsed your black eyes,
In chagrin has it held back
the kohl stick.
Like the candle my heart’s
passion has reached its end.
My streaming tears keep
the embers glowing.
gardīd rāz-e ‘ishq zi pūshīdan āshkār
dandān-e bakhyah pardaye mā rā darīdah ast
qūs-e qazah agarchi ba gardūn kashīdah sar
abrūye yār dīdah u rangash parīdah ast
yak mūye farq nīst mayān-e dū abrū at
khush miśra’-e ba miśra’-e dīgar rasīdah ast
zin pīshtar ĥalāvat-e shahad īnqadar nabūd
zanbūr dānam ān lab-e shīrīn gazīdah ast
uftād gul zi dīdaye Ya‘qūb hamchū ashk
dānam nasīm-e Miśr ba Kan‘ān vazīdah ast
Attempting to conceal,
I revealed the secret of my love.
The teeth of the stitch tore
asunder my veil.
Brandishing itself against
the sky, the rainbow
Lost colour at the sight
of my love’s eyebrows.
The exquisite similitude
of your eyebrows:
One hemistich as
elegant as the other.
Never before has honey
tasted so sweet.
The bee, I know, has
stung that sweet lip.
Like tears Yaqub sheds
a iction o his sore eyes.
The zephyr of Egypt has,
I know, set out for Canaan.39
dar ĥairatam ki āyinah imrūz śubĥ-e dam
rūye ki dīdah ast ki rūye tū dīdah ast
dar zindagī ba khwāb na bīnad kasī Ghanī
āsāyishī ki dil zi pas-e marg dīdah ast
59
sarnāmaye maktūb-e tū sar rishtaye kīn ast
sarīki darīn nāmah buvad chīn-e jabīn ast
āsūdah am az garmīye khurshīd-e qayāmat
kaz luf-e tū har nāmaye siyāh sāyāh nishīn ast
bar rūye zamīn hīchkas āsūdah nabāshad
ganjī buvad ārām ki dar zīr-e zamīn ast
What is it with the mirror
this morning?
Has it beheld a face?
Yours I’m sure.
Alive, none can know, Ghani,
even in a dream,
The solace that awaits
the heart in the grave.
59
The epigraph of your letter
tells of your pique.
Every line in it
a crease of the brow.
Of the doomsday’s sun
I have no fear.
Your mercy makes a canopy
of my black deeds.40
The surface of the earth
provides no one comfort.
Peace is the real treasure
found beneath the earth.
mā zindagī az dīdan-e rukhsār-e tū dārīm
ākhir nigāh-e mā nafas-e bāz pasīn ast
kārī ba falak mardum-e āzādah nadārand
har sarv ki dīdam Ghanī khāk nishīn ast
60
bālish-e khūbān-e digar az par ast
shaukh-e marā tnah ba zīr-e sar ast
pīsh-e lab-e yār ki jān parvar ast
har ki zanad dam zi Maśīha khar ast
bar lab-e khamyāzah kasham dar khumār
bakhyah agar hast kha-e sāghar ast
Constantly gazing at you:
in this lives my life.
The last glance at you
is my last breath too.
Free men have no
business with the sky.
Every cypress we see, Ghani,
is grounded in the earth.41
60
Other beauties have their
pillows made of feathers.
My proud one harbours
mischief under hers.
When face-to-face with her
life-enhancing lips,
He who boasts of Christ’s
breath is senseless.42
As ebriety departs, my
mouth is left agape.
Only the cup’s brim
can stitch the void.
bī rukhat az baski nadārad śafā
āyinah gūyā kaf-e raushangar ast
āb buvad ma‘naye raushan Ghanī
khūb agar bastah shavad gauhar ast
61
tā kār-e tū bīdāriye shabhāye darāz ast
chashmat dar-e faizī ast ki bar rūye tū bāz ast
uftādan u barkhāstan-e bādah parastān
dar mazhab-e rindān-e kharābāt namāz ast
may nīst chū dar kāsah marā ra‘shah dar a‘ā ast
dastam ba nazar panjaye anbūr navāz ast
Deprived of your visage,
it has lost all sheen.
The mirror now looks
like the polisher’s hand.
Luminous meaning is
water, Ghani.
Compactly knit, it turns
into a pearl.
61
Occupied with long vigils
during long nights,
Your eye is an ever-open
door of bounty on your face.
The rising and falling
of tipsy drinkers
Is namaz in the creed
of the tavern’s dissolutes.43
No wine in the cup,
yet my limbs tremble,
My hands like those
of the lute player.
chūn bāl kushāyam ki darīn śaidgah-e dahar
az dām hamah rūye zamīn sīnaye bāz ast
62
chūn āstīn hamīshah jabīnam zi chīn pur ast
ya‘nī dilam zi dast-e tū ay nāznīn pūr ast
har chashm-e nay zi naghmaye shīrīn labālab ast
zanbūr khanah īst ki az angbīn pur ast
har kas ba dargah-e karamat burd tuhfah ī
mā rā zi dast-e khāliye khud āstīn pur ast
juz zīr-e khāk jāye man-e khāksār nīst
rūye zamīn zi mardum-e bālā nishīn pur ast
As I stretch my wings over
the world’s hunting ground,
To ensnare me, the earth’s
breast is agape.
62
Like the sleeve my forehead
is always full of creases.
That is, O charming one,
my heart is etched with your palm.
Every eye of the ute
over ows with sweet melodies.
As each honeycomb of the
hive oozes honey.
All received gifts at
your bountiful shrine.
My sleeve too is full,
though only with my empty hand.
Beneath the earth lies the
abode of this dust-ridden one,
While the surface is full of
men seated aloft.
63
baski mānand-e paikaram az pīrī kāst
tā nagīrad kamram kas natavānam barkhāst
tā nasūzad nakunad mail-e bulandī chū sipand
chashm-e bad dūr azīn akhtar-e āli‘ ki mar ast
gar kasī may nakharad gham makhūr ay bādah farūsh
īn matā‘ īst ki chūn kuhnah shavad bīsh bahā ast
‘umr hā shud ki ba girdāb-e junūn uftādīm
kaf-e īn baĥr-e pur āshūb zi maghz-e sar-e mā ast
64
shi‘r agar i‘jāz bāshad bī buland u past nīst
dar yad-e baiā hamah angusht hā yak dast nīst
63
Decrepitude has turned
my frame into a bow.
www.kashmirsufis.wordpress.com

I can’t rise unless held by my waist.

Like wild rue, it rises
only when it burns.
May my auspicious star
be safe from the evil eye!44
Grieve not, wine seller,
if none buys your wine.
It gets richer as it grows in age.
Ages have passed since I fell
into the whirlpool of madness.
My agitated mind raises foam
in this sea of tumult.
64
Exquisite verse too has
its ups and downs.
And the ngers of the
shining hand too vary in length.45
ay dil az mauj-e sarāb-e narmiye dushman bitars
bahr-e māhi halqa hāye dām kam az shast nīst
tā sarash az būye may shud garm khumhā rā shikast
hīchkas dar daur-e mā chūn muĥtasib badmast nīst
65
khāk az tīgh-e rāqam ba jigar zakhmī dāsht
kafanam marĥam-e kāfūr bar ān zakhm guzāsht
tuhmat-e khānah nishīnī na pasandīd ba khwīsh
varnah Majnūn gilah az sakhtiye zanjīr nadāsht
bar nadārīm zi ash‘ār-e kasī mamūn rā
tab‘-e nāzuk natāvanad sukhan-e kas bardāsht
O heart, beware of the mirage
of the enemy’s gentleness.
No less than a sharp hook
is the ne net for the sh.
In amed by the wine’s aroma
he shattered countless jars.
None in our gathering was more
deeply drunk than the prohibitor.
65
The sword of my separation
wounds the earth’s heart.
And with camphor my shroud
dresses that wound.46
He could not bear being
called the ‘settled one’.
Why else did Majnun
complain of the con ning chain?47
From no one do I borrow
the theme of my poetry.
For a delicate disposition
others’ speech is a burden.
tanash az tīr-e jafāye tū naistān gardīd
‘alam-e shīr dilī har ki ba ‘ālam afrāsht
66
ma‘naye śāf ki dar qālib-e alfāz-e bad ast
hast āyinah-e śā ki nihān dar namd ast
gar zi dam sardiye īn tīrah dilān āgah nīst
az chi rū jāmaye āyinah qabāye namd ast
tā shud angusht numā urra at az ĥusn-e qabūl
shānah bar gīsuye khūbān-e digar dast rad ast
khāk rā gil bikun az giryah Ghanī dar pīrī
ĥalqaye qāmat-e kham qālib-e khisht-e laĥad ast
Like a reed bed, his body is
riddled with the arrows of your betrayal.
He who hoisted the ag
of bravery in the world.
66
Crystal meaning in the
mould of hazy words
Is like a mirror
wrapped in felt.
If the coldness of these indi erent
souls the mirror has not felt,
Pray why has it donned
the mantle of felt!
Since your forelock has become
the cynosure of admiration,
The comb has spurned
the tresses of other beauties.
In old age, Ghani, turn the
dust to clay with tears
And make your bent frame
the mould for your grave’s bricks.
67
tār-e zulf-e yār az changash magar uftādah būd
shānah dar faryād imshab kam zi mūsīqār nīst
rishtah rā az panbaye tauĥīd tā Manśūr bāft
ikhtilāfī darmiyān-e subĥah u zunnār nīst
68
‘inān-e nafs kashīdan jihād-e mardān ast
nafas shumardah zadan kār-e ahl-e ‘irfān ast
marīz āb-e rukh-e khud barāye nān zinhār
ki ābrū chu shavad jam‘ āb-e ĥaivān ast
balā ast nafs ‘inān chūn zi dast -e ‘aql girift
‘aśā chū az kaf -e Mūsa futad u‘bān ast
67
Perhaps the strings of the beloved’s
tresses have grown from a lute,
For tonight the comb plays
like a musician.
As soon as Mansur spun his
thread from the cotton of Oneness,
The rosary and the in del’s thread
became one.48
68
To rein in their selves
is the jihad of men.
To keep a count of their
breaths the gnostics’ task.49
Fritter away not the sweat
of your honour for mere bread.
The brow’s sweat collects
and makes the elixir of life.
Deprived of reason’s hold,
the self turns into a monster.
A serpent arose when the
sta fell from Musa’s hand.50
mu‘aar ast dimāgham zi khurdan-e śahbā
magar piyālah am imshab sifāl-e raiĥān ast
69
ba chashm-e khud natavān dīd śubĥ-e pīrī rā
khusham ki dīdah zi mū pīshtar safīd shud ast
70
darvīsh ba sāmān ki ravān shud nabarad jān
barg-e safar-e ahl-e qanā‘at par-e mūr ast
bā murdah dilān chand nishīnī ba masājid
khum khānah nishīn bāsh ki khum zindah ba gūr ast
With fragrance has the wine
su used my being tonight.
Sweet basil’s earth, it seems,
was used to mould the cup.
69
One can’t bear the sight of
the dawn of one’s old age.
Happy that my eye turned
white before my hair!
70
Weighed down by other burdens,
no dervish can carry his soul.
An austere man’s provision
is but an ant’s wing.
How long will you sit in the
mosque amidst dead hearts?
Turn to the tavern, for the wine jar
lives even in the grave.
 71
dāyim ba rāh-e shauq jilu rīz mīravad
gulgūn-e ashk rā mia am tāzyānah īst
ghā l mashav zi ‘āqibat-e kār-e khud Ghanī
dil nih ba khwāb-e marg ki dunyā fasānah īst
72
dil munawwar kay shavad dar zulmat ābād-e badan
sham‘ rā raushan namīsāzand tā dar qālib ast
zindah natavān būd bī la‘lat ki mushtāq-e turā
yā lab-e shīrīn-e tū yā jān-e shīrīn bar lab ast
dānaye dām-e malāyik bar zamīn uftādah ast
kas namī dānad dur-e gūsh ast yā khāl-e lab ast
71
At a bridle-spurning speed,
they are always racing
in love’s path.
For my rosy tears the
eyelashes are no less than whips.
Not for a moment be
unmindful of your end, Ghani.
Give yourself up to death’s sleep,
for the world is an illusion.
72
Con ned in the body’s dark
chamber, the heart gains no light.
No candle glows until
taken out of its mould.
Parted from your lips, the lover’s
life is slipping away.
If not your sweet lips,
his sweet life is on his lips.
The grain of beauty’s snare
is lying on the ground.
Is it a pearl in the earlobe
or a mole on the lip?
73
takyah tā chand kunī bar nafasī hamchū ĥabāb
chashm bukshāyi ki hastī girahī bar bād ast
74
kulbaye mā garchi bī rauzan chū fānūs ast līk
bazm-e yārān az chirāgh-e khānaye mā raushan ast
sham‘ mīgūyad ba ahl-e bazm bā sūz-u-gudāz
sar burīdan pīsh-e īn sangīn dilān gulchīdan ast
nīst juz afsūs khurdan ĥāsil-e kisht-e jahān
āsiyā gardāniye mā dast barham sūdan ast
73
How long will you bank
on a mere breath like a bubble?
Open your eyes: life
is an airy knot.
74
Like the lantern,
my cottage is windowless.
Yet my lamp brightens
the gathering of friends.
Of these stone-hearted the candle
tearfully complains to the gathering:
‘Severing heads for them
is akin to plucking owers.’
Nothing but remorse
does the world yield.
Turning the millstone
only chafes our hands.
75
gūsh-e ghavvā? shunīd az lab-e khāmūsh-e h
dam nigahdār kazīn bih guhrī natavān yāft
76
chunān ān nāznīn nāzuk dimāgh ast
ki ū rā būye gul dūd-e chirāgh ast
77
‘āshiqān rā junbish-e migān-e chashm-e yār kusht
‘ālamī rā itirāb-e nabz-e īn bīmār kusht
tā shavad qabrash ziyārat gāh-e arbāb-riyā
khwīsh rā zāhid ba zīr-e gunbad-e dastār kusht
75
The silent lips of the bubble
whispered into the diver’s ears:
‘A pearl more precious
you shall never nd.’
76
For her the fragrance of the
rose is the lamp’s smoke.
So delicately made
is that graceful one.
77
The beloved’s uttering eyelashes
have slain many a lover.
This sick man’s restive pulse
has slain the world.
Under his dome-like turban
the ascetic had himself killed,
That his tomb may become a
shrine for the pretentious.51
78
paivastah dilam śāf zi gard-e kha-e yār ast
jārūb kash-e khānaye āyīnah ghubār ast
ma‘zūr buvad zāhid agar jām na gīrad
kaz dānaye tasbīĥkafash āblah dār ast
79
bī chirāgh ast agar bazm-e khayālam gham nīst
miśra‘-e rīkhtah sham‘ī st ki dar ‘ālam nīst
gar muyassar nashud asbāb-e nishāam gham nīst
pīsh-e man chīn-e jabīn az lab-e khandān kam nīst
78
The dust of the beloved’s down
keeps my heart ever clean.
The dust thus plays the
sweeper for my glasshouse.
The ascetic be excused if he
doesn’t seize the cup.
Turning beads, his hand
is full of blisters!
79
Why grieve if my thought’s
assembly is without a lamp?
Every well-wrought verse
is a matchless candle therein.
Why grieve if there’s
none to cheer me up?
Her brow bedecked with
a frown is no less than a smiling lip.
 80
chi gham azīn ki ba-e bādah sust parvāz ast
ki dar giriftan-e rang-e parīdah shahbāz ast
bajāyē bakhyah zanad baski khandah bar zakhmam
hamīshah sūzan-e bī raĥam rā dahān bāz ast
81
taubah az may na kunam dar pīrī
may kashī dar shab-e mahtāb khush ast
tā bakay tishnaye khūnam bāshad
tīgh rā bidihī āb khush ast
80
Why grieve if wine’s
water bird is slow to take o ?
In capturing the colour that has ed
it becomes a royal falcon.
Not in stitching but mocking
at my wounds does it delight.
The cruel needle ever keeps
its mouth wide open.
81
In old age too, I shall not
repent of drinking wine.
A draught of vintage is
delightful on moonlit nights.52
How long will it thirst
for my blood?
Better that the sword’s
thirst be quenched.
82
pīsh-e śayyād ravam bāl shān az sar-e shauq
gar bidānam gharash rīkhtan-e bāl-e man ast
hīchgah lab nakunad bāz ba dushnām-e raqīb
man ba tang āmadam az yār ki pur bīdahan ast
83
az kināram dukhtar-e raz kard tā pahlū tihī
kār-e man aknūn Ghanī bā i -e ashk uftādah ast
84
ahl-e dil az tark-e khwāb sair-e falak mīkunand
‘Isā-e vaqt-e khud ast har ki shabī zindah dāsht
82
In joy I would rush to
the fowler with open arms.
If only I knew he would
strip me of my wings.
Not once did she open her
mouth to curse the rival.
I am fed up of a love
so tight-lipped.53
83
Since the daughter of vine
has slipped from my embrace,
Ghani, I am left to deal
with the child of tears.54
84
Sacri cing sleep, living
souls traverse the skies.
He who keeps vigil during
nights is the Jesus of his age.55
 85
shakl-e gardūn girah u śūrat-e akhtar girah ast
kāram az anjum-u-a āk girah dar girah ast
86
dil baski mukaddar zi jahān-e guzrān ast
chun shīshaye sā‘at nafasam rīg-e rawān ast
87
zi shauqat chāk-e jīb-e ghunchahā tā dāman uftādast
biyā kaz intizarat gul ba chashm-e gulshan uftādast
88
marā ba khānah sifālī zi bīnavāyī nīst
khusham ki dar kaf-e man kāsaye gadāyi nīst
85
The rmament and my fortune-star
both resemble a knot.
My fortune is thus entangled
in a knot within a knot.
86
Fleeting time sullies my heart
such that my breath ows
Like sand in the hourglass.
87
Down to hems have the rosebuds
rent their garments in your love.
Come, pining for you the garden’s
eye has turned sore!
88
Not even an earthen bowl has
poverty spared in my abode.
I am glad there is no begging bowl
for my hand to hold!
89
Kashmīr az śabāhat raushangar-e jamāl ast
ĥusn-e siyāh ānja gar hast khāl khāl ast
90
mārā ba ghair dāgh-e jigar dar ayāgh nīst
chūn lālah durd-e sāghar-e mā ghair-e dāgh nīst
91
az mauj kujā bastah shavad rakhnaye girdāb
bar zakhm-e dilam bakhyah zadan naqsh bar āb ast
92
dar har namāz dast ba
zānū chirā zanad zāhid agar zi kardah pashīmān nagashtah ast
89
Kashmir’s beauty sparkles
through its fairness.
Black beauty here, if any,
is as rare as a mole.
90
My earthen cup holds nothing
but a branded heart.
Like the tulip, the dregs in my
goblet are but a stain.
91
How can the wave mend
the ssure of the whirlpool?
An engraving upon water is
the dressing on my heart’s wound.
92
In every prayer he places
his hands on his knees.
Does the ascetic regret his act?
93
sa‘īye mu is kay bajāye mīrasad
ādam-e bī barg tīr-e bī par ast
94
dar mauj khīz-e giryaye man tā kunad shinā
daryā ba pusht-e khwīsh kadūye ĥabāb bast
95
baski ba tarīqaye shabhāye gham khū kardah būd
‘āqibat parvānah dar pāye chirāgh ārām yāft
96
Ghanī zīr-e zamīn ahl-e fanā rā
buvad ‘aishī ki bar rūye zamīn nīst
93
How can a poor man’s striving
attain its end?
A stripped man is a tuftless arrow.
94
That it may swim across
the torrent of my tears,
The sea set a oat a gourd
of bubble on its back.
95
Accustomed to the dark
nights of grief,
The moth nally nds peace
at the lamp’s feet.
96
For those who embrace
self-extinction, Ghani,
Await beneath the earth joys
unknown to those above it.
97
az sharm-e zuhd-e khushk ba maikhānah tar shud ast
gar ba‘d azīn vuū nakunad pārsā rawāst
98
chashm-e nargis pīsh-e chashmat kay tavānad shud safīd
chashm-e tū har chand bīmār ast ammā zard nīst
99
‘āqil ān bih ki buvad chashm barāh-e murdan
az paye bī basrān khwāb bih az bīdāri ast
100
bād-e śabā ba gulshan-e ĥusn-e tū rāh na yāft
ān ghunchaye dahān ba nasīm-e sukhan shiguft
97
Remorseful of his arid self-denial,
he is now drenched in the tavern.
It be ts the devout not to wash
himself from now.
98
In your presence how can the
narcissus’s eye attain whiteness?
Howsoever sick, your eye is never pale.
99
Wise is the man awaiting death.
For the sightless sleep fares
better than wakefulness.
100
The morning breeze has no access
to the garden of your beauty.
Only the zephyr of speech makes
the bud-like mouth bloom.
101
muĥtasib khwāhi kunī bīkār gar khammār rā
shīshah hāye dānaye angūr mībāyad shikast
102
kashtiye man chūn buvad aiman darīn baĥr az shikast
langar az sargashtgī sang-e falākhun gashtah ast
103
ĥusnī ki safīd ast nadārad mazah chandān
hamrang-e namak hast u līkin namkīn nīst
104
zi sail-e ashk-e mā dar ‘ālam-e khāk
ghubarī gar buvad dar khāir-e māst
101
Prohibitor! Want to make the
wine maker redundant?
Better that you crush the
grape cups.56
102
When my boat escaped wreckage
from the midst of the sea,
The harbour rose in tumult
like a catapult’s stone.
103
Fair beauty is tasteless:
Salt-coloured, not salty.
104
In the dust-laden world
the ood of my tears
Swept away all save the
dust of my thoughts.
105
dar simā‘-e naghmah chāk az baski shud pairāhanam
dar libāsam ghair-e tār-e chand chūn anbūr nīst
106
kas namīgīrad khabar yakdam zi ĥālam dar khumār
bī kasam tā nashaye may az sar-e man raftah ast
107
dast az jān shustan āsānast dar shabhāye hijr
mītavān chūn sham‘ khūn-e khud barang-e āb rīkht
108
khalq sar gardān hamah az qaht-e āb-u-dānah and
har kirā dīdam ghair az āsiyā dar gardish ast
105
The enrapturing song tore
my robe to shreds.
Like a lute I had
but a few strings on.
 106
No one inquired after me
in the state of a hangover.
Helpless am I since
ebriety has passed.
107
Washing hands of life is easy
in the nights of separation.
Like the candle one can shed
one’s blood soundlessly.
108
Scarcity makes men wanderers.
All but the millstone are on the move.
109
chunān zi sair-e chaman dil shikastah am bī may
ki sabzah dar tah-e pāyam chū rīzaye mīnāst
110
kunad dar har qadam faryād khalkhāl
ki ĥusn-e gul rukhān pā dar rikāb ast
111
rasad ba gūsh-e man āwāz har dam az lab-e gūr
biyā ki khāk zi shauq-e tū chashm dar rāh ast
112
imshab ki az sūz-e darūn nabam chū tār-e sham’ būd
ta‘vīz bar bāzūye man hamchūn par-e parvānah sūkht
109
When sober, a stroll in the
garden was heart-shattering.
The grass under my feet was
like bits of broken ask.
110
With every step the
anklet cries out:
‘Beauty, O fair ones,
has her feet in the stirrup.’
111
From the grave I hear
a call every moment:
‘Come, the dust’s eye
pines for you.’
112
Tonight the re within made
my pulse icker like a candle,
And the amulet on my arm
burnt up like a moth’s wing.
113
bugzar az khwīsh chū bīnī dahān-e yār Ghanī
dil ba hastī chi nihī rāh-e ‘adam darpīsh ast
114
bī riyāat nashavad nashaye ‘irfān ĥāsil
tā kadū khushk na gardīd maye nāb na yāft
115
har ĥalqaye zulf-e tū dahānī shudah az shauq
bugzār ki yakbār bibūsīd kaf-e pāyat
116
tāqat-e barkhāstan chūn gard-e namnākam namānd
khalq pindārad ki may khurdast u mast uftādah ast
 113
Ghani, as you behold love’s
lips, pass beyond yourself.
Why set your heart on life when
the road to eternity beckons?57
114
Without discipline the ebriety
of gnosis cannot be tasted.
No wine is ready till the gourd dries up.
115
Longing has curled your
tresses into round lips.
Permit them to cascade
and kiss your feet once.
116
Like moist dust I’ve no strength to rise.
They think I’m supine because I’m drunk.
117
taghāful-e tū marā khush numāyad az lufat
ki īn ba har kas u ān khāsah az barāye man ast
118
chu sar ba pāye tū sūdam zi dard-e sar rastam
hināye pāye tū am kard kār-e śandal-e surkh
119
lab-e la‘lat chū muqābil ba maye nāb shavad
sāghar-e bādah zi khijlat chū ĥabāb āb shavad
bakht-e shūram shudah az baski gulūgīr Ghanī
gar chakānī ba labam shīr namak āb shavad
117
Your indi erence delights me
more than your concern.
For it is reserved for me while
others partake of the latter.
118
Bruising my head against your
feet relieved me of pain.
The henna of your feet
acted like a red balm.
119
When the ruby wine came
face-to-face with your lips,
Like a burst bubble, every
goblet turned to water out of shame.
Bitter luck has tied itself
around my neck, Ghani.
If you sprinkle milk on my lips,
it will turn brackish.
120
shukrānaye tīrī ki guzar
az dil-u-jān kard az daur-e saram sajdah ba miĥrāb-e kamān
kard
bīzāram azān‘umr ki vābastaye rūzī ast
chūn śubĥmarā dīdan-e nān sīr zi jān kard
tā āb-e rukh-e muĥtasib-e shehar narīzad
mā kashtiye may rā natavānīm ravān kard
har chand Ghanī hamchū nigīn khānah nishīn ast
nāmash zi dar-e bastah bar āyad chi tavān kard
121
zi sharm-e chashm-e tū bādām khushk tar gardad
maye rasīdah chū bīnad lab-e tū bar gardad
120
Her arrow went past my soul and heart;
thank God a hundred times!
And circling my head knelt again
in the bow’s arch.
At dawn a glimpse of bread
makes me forget my soul.
I am distressed by a life
so hinged on sustenance.
Until the sweat of honour
drains o the town’s prohibitor
I cannot set sail my wine boat.
Howsoever Ghani stays put
in his abode like a seal,
His name slips through the
closed door: what is he to do?
121
Shamed by your eye,
the almond shall turn drier.
And faced with your lips
the vintage wine shall turn bland.
zi khud numāyī bugzar ba mausim-e pīrī
chū abrah kuhnah shavad bih ki astar gardad
ba bazm-e bādah arūr ast gardish-e jāmī
chū nīst sāghar-e may kāsahāye sar gardad
122
garmiye az dil-e sakht-e tū nadīdam hargiz
bāvaram nīst ki ātash ‘alam az sang shavad
 123
muĥtasib bar dar-e maykhāna nishastan dārad
shīshaye dānaye angūr shikastan dārad
har dam az gūshaye khāir sar jastan dārad
ma’naye tāzah ghazālīst ki bastan dārad
In the season of old age
give up self-display.
The worn-out cloth serves
better as an inner lining.
In the wine assembly you need
to keep cups in motion.
If not cups, cup-shaped heads will do.
122
No warmth did I nd
in your stony heart.
Who says that a stone
hides a spark?
123
The prohibitor sits in
the tavern’s doorway,
Smashing the cups of grapes.
Every moment it seeks to slip
from the mind’s nook.
Fresh poetic meaning is a gazelle
to be captured.58
zang az dil nabarad dar shab-e hijrat mahtāb
bī rukhat āyīnaye māh shikastan dārad
naqsh-e pāyam zi rah-e khāk nishīnī gūyad
ki bahar jā ki nishānand nishastan dārad
124
ān chashm-e mast bādah kashī rā chū ‘ām kard
nargis zarī ki dāsht hamah śarf-e jām kard
tā būd guftgū sukhanam nātamām būd
nāzam ba khāmshī ki sukhan rā tamām kard
125
andīshah nadāshtam az dil ki khūn shavad
dāgham azīn ki dāgh-e tū az dil birūn shavad
In the night of parting, the glowing
moon cannot cleanse the heart’s rust.
Deprived of your visage, its mirror
seeks to smash itself.
Set into dust,
my footprints whisper:
‘Let us be seated wherever
they make us sit.’
124
When that drunken eye
made drinking universal,
The narcissus spent all its
capital on the cup.
My speech remained un nished
as long as I spoke.
Proud that I accomplished
it with my silence.
125
I fear not that my heart
might be crushed to blood.
But I am anguished that your
scar might fade away from it.
gūyad zabān-e shīshah nihāni ba gūsh-e jām
har kas ki sar kashad ba jahān sar nigūn shavad
chūn panbah khushk gasht Ghanī magĥz dar saram
zībad agar fatīlaye dāgh-e junūn shavad
126
bar zabān qāni‘ agar ĥarf-e lab-e nān gīrad
zūd az sharam zabān dar tah-e dandān gīrad
tā ghubārī zi sar-e kūye tū rūbad khurshīd
nūr dar dīdaye u śūrat-e migān gīrad
dar dām-e śubĥGhanī pīr-e falak mīgūyad
ki qaā nān dihad ān laĥzah ki dandān gīrad
The ask’s hidden tongue
whispers into the cup’s ear:
‘He who raises his head high
shall be humbled.’
Since my brain has dried up
like a cotton ball inside my head
It can serve as a gauze
for the scar of my frenzy.
126
If the austere one’s tongue
ever utters the word ‘bread’,
Soon will shame make him
bite it between his teeth.
That the sun may wipe
away dust from your street,
Its eye emits rays in the
form of eyelashes.
At the break of dawn, Ghani,
the old Saturn whispers thus:
‘Fate provides bread the moment
it snatches the teeth.’59
127
ba ruz-e hijr kay sair-e gulistānam havas dāram
ki gulban bī gul-e rūye tū dar chashmam qafas bāshad
bidih az sabzaye kha murgh-e dil rā kha-e āzādī
chū magĥz-e pistah tā kay ūiye mā dar qafas bāshad
128
hāsid az kardaye khud gasht pashīmān ki ba zūr
bar zamīn zad sukhan-e man va ba a āk rasīd
129
Man?ūr bār bast zi dunyā u dār mānd
parvāz kard gul zi gulistān u khār mānd
127
Parted from you, my heart
desires not the garden.
Without your rosy cheek,
the rosebush is a prison.
For the heart’s bird, pass a writ
of freedom from that greenish down.
How long will our parrot be caged
like a pistachio’s kernel?
128
The jealous rival regretted his act,
for when with vehemence
He dashed my verse to the ground,
it reached the skies.
129
Mansur bore himself away
and left the gibbet behind.
Mark, the rose is ed but
the thorn abides its place.60
hamchūn sapīdayī ki buvad gird-e mardumak
tā dīd panbah dāgh-e marā bar kinār mānd
bugzasht ‘umr u mūye safīdī ba jā guzasht
khākistrī zi qā aye yādgār mānd
130
surmah uftād zi chashm-e tū u ruswā gardīd
chūn siyah mast ki az rauzan-e maykhāna futad
sham’-e āham ki kunad bazm-e falak rā raushan
akhtar-e sūkhtah am chūn par-e parvānah futad
kūdkān sang ba kaf bar sar-e rāhand Ghanī
khwāham īn qur‘ah ba nām-e man-e dīvānah zadand
Like the whiteness which
surrounds the eye’s pupil,
To watch my scar the
white dressing stands aloof.
Life itself has passed and left
behind a few white strands.
The ashes left behind tell
of the caravan past.
130
Falling from your eyes, the
kohl fell into disgrace.
Like a drunken sot who falls
down the tavern’s window.
The candle of my sighs
irradiates the sky’s assembly.
I am a burnt star fallen
like the moth’s wing.
Stones in hands, street urchins
wait in ambush, Ghani.
How I wish the lot falls
to this madman’s name!
131
riyā-e ĥusnash az khūn-e dil-e man tāzah mīgardad
zi rūyam mīparad rang u ba rūyash ghāzah mīgardad
chū girdābam man-e mahjūr ba jām-e tihī sarkhush
labam paivastah bar gird-e lab-e khamyāzah mīgardad
132
faiz-e sukhan ba mard-e sukhangū namī rasad
az nāfah būye mushk ba āhū namī rasad
zāhid ba yār tuhmat-e śahba kashī makun
paidāst īnki may ba lab-e u namī rasad
131
My heart’s blood gives freshness
to her beauty’s garden.
The sheen ees from my
face to adorn her cheeks.
Forlorn, yet drunk on an
empty cup like a whirlpool.
My lips remain glued to
those open lips.
132
Seldom does the poet derive
bene t from his verse.
The musk’s fragrance always
eludes the deer.
Blame her not, O ascetic, for
sipping the draught of wine.
There’s not a sign that it
has kissed her lips.
 133
āyad az tār-e nafas ā’ir-e ma‘nī dar dām
ay ĥarīfān qafas-e gūsh muhayyā dārīd
134
nayaftad partavī bar māh gar az sham‘-e rukhsārash
ba gardish hālah hamchūn shu‘la-e javvālah mīgardad
chasān az hamdamān dāram nihān dard-e dil khud rā
ki hamchūn nay nafas dar sīnaye man nālah mīgardad
135
chāk-e pairāhan-e Yūsuf nabvad bī ma‘nī
khandah bar pākiye dāmān-e Zuleikhā dārad
133
The bird of meaning is ensnared
with the string of breath.
Friends, be ready to
cage it in your ears.
134
If the candle of her face
sheds no light on the moon,
Its halo will only swirl like
a circling ame.
I hid my heart’s torment
from my friends and now,
Like the ute’s lament, my
breath rages within my breast.
135
The torn shirt of Yusuf,
full of meaning,
Mocks at Zuleikha’s
mantle of chastity.61
baski dar gūshaye ‘uzlat chū Ghanī dil bastam
har ki shud gūshah nishīn dar dil-e man jā dārad
136
nihālī rā ki dihqān kand az jā kay amar gīrad
namī khwāham ki mā rā āsmān az khāk bar gīrad
137
az sālikān-e raftah nishāni ba jā namānd
bar āb har ki raft azū naqsh-e pā namānd
138
tā chashm dūkhtam zi jahān bīnisham farūz sūzan barāye
dīdaye man mīl-e
surmah būd
Like Ghani, a solitary
corner so much I love,
That every recluse nds
a place in my heart.
136
Unearthed by the farmer,
can the sapling bear fruit?
Let me, O heavens,
remain inearthed!
137
No sign of the passers-by
can one discern.
The traveller on water
leaves no trace.
138
Stitching the eye from
the world, I gained in vision.
For me the needle became
the kohl stick.
139
dūsh bī may dil zi sair-e bāgh dar āzār būd
kāsaye sar hamchū nargis bar tan-e mā bār būd
140
kasī āvārah tā kay dar dayār-e khwīshtan bāshad
chū rīg-e shīshaye sā‘at musā r dar vatan bāshad
141
tabkhālah ki jā bar lab-e ān hūsh rubā kard
may rīkht ba jām-e khud u khūn dar dil-e mā kard
142
gard-e dāman-e taghāful naravad az yādam
īn ghubārīst ki dar khāir-e mā mīgardad
139
Without ebriety, yesterday I
strolled in the garden distressed.
Like the narcissus, my head
weighed upon my body.
140
How long can one
wander in one’s abode,
And like sand in an
hourglass be a traveller at home?
141
The blister that has made a place
on the lips of the mesmerizer,
Pours wine into its cup,
leaving my heart bleeding.
142
The marks of apathy have
stuck to my memory.
They are the dust that still
roams through my mind.
143
kibr dar silsilaye bādah kashān kam bāshad
tāk har chand ki bī bar buvad kham bāshad
144
chūn ba sair-e chaman ān dilbar-e annāz āyad
rang-e gul bīshtar az būy ba parvāz āyad
145
khush ān zamān ki tīrash az shast jastah bāshad
dar pahlūyam chū tarkash tā par nishashtah bāshad
146
buvad dar itirāb az ahl-e ‘ālam har ki kāmil shud
tapīdan darmiyān-e jumlah a‘ā qismat-e dil shud
143
Pride is not the way of the wine lovers.
Fruitless, yet the vine remains bent.
144
When that coquettish one
strolled into the garden,
Faster than fragrance ed
the colour of the rose.
145
Happy the hour when the arrow
ies from her bow,
And, as in a quiver, rests in
my side spreading its feathers.
146
Only the perfect
know restlessness.
Only the heart among
organs is fated to throb.
147
naśīb-e mā zi bāgh-e āfrīnish mīvaye gham shud
nihālī rā ki parvardīm ākhir nakhl-e mātam shud
148
az charkh bī mazallat ĥājat ravā nagardad
tā ābru na rīzī īn āsiyā nagardad
149
dīdah am az dīdan-e va‘-e jahān ranjūr shud
zakhm-e chashmam rā safīdī marĥam-e kāfūr shud
150
chū sheikh-e shehar turā dīd dar namāz uftad
damī agarchi ba pā istād bāz uftad
147
From the garden of creation,
we only got the fruit of grief.
The sapling we nurtured grew
into a tree of mourning.
148
The sky provides not
till you know disgrace.
This millstone moves not
till you shed your brow’s sweat.
149
The spectacle of the
world wounds my eye.
Like camphor, whiteness
becomes its balm.62
150
As the sheikh caught a glimpse of you,
he fell in his namaz.
He rose for a moment and
fell down again.
151
ān āftāb-e tābān chūn bī naqāb gardad
dar chāh māh-e Kan‘ān az sharm āb gardad
152
sipand āsā agar pīsh-e khudam dar ātash andāzad
azān bihtar ki dūr az khwīsh chūn chashm-e badam sāzad
153
māh andākht sipar chūn araf-e rūye tū shud
kāst az ghairat u ham chashm ba abrūye tū shud
154
nabvad zi shauq-e bāl-e humā itirāb-e man
chashmam zi ishtiyāq-e par-e kāh mī parad
151
When the bright sun
removed its veil,
In the well the moon of Canaan
was drenched with shame.63
 152
Better that like rue
she cast me into ames,
And not away like the evil eye.
153
Up against your visage,
the moon cast o its shield.
Consumed by shame,
it emulated your eyebrow.
154
I’m not in anguish pining
for the huma’s wing.
My eye has become restive
yearning for a blade of grass.64
155
farīb-e ni‘mat-e shāhān makhūr ki az faghfūr
śadāye kāsaye khālī ba gūsh mī āyad
156
kār-e kasī bar ār ki khud ham rasī ba kār
chūn gul nishān shavad par-e bulbul ba tīr band
157
mānand-e āftāb ki raushan shavad ba śubĥ
dāgh-e dilam zi marham-e kāfūr tāzah shud
158
tā harf-e may parastān guftī shunīd zāhid
hushyār bāsh īnjā dīvār gūsh dārad
155
Let not the emperors’ riches
beguile you, for their porcelain
Sends out to the ears a hollow sound.
156
Strive to ful l others’ tasks,
if you desire yours ful lled.
You desire the rose? Make your arrow’s
tuft out of the nightingale’s feathers.
157
Like the sun that shines
when it is morn,
The balm of camphor
brands my heart afresh.
158
About to speak against
drinkers, the ascetic heard:
‘Beware, walls too have ears here.’
159
dilam rā khāl-e ū duzdīd u dar gard-e khaash jūyam
ki māl-e burdah rā duzdān nihān dar khāk misāzand
160
aar bar ‘aks bakhshad sa‘ye man az al‘i vāgūn
zi faryād-e sipandam chashm-e bad az khwāb bar khīzad
161
śad maikadah rā rang ba har gūshah tavān rīkht
zān surmah ki az chashm-e siyāh-e mast-e tū uftād
162
ba kārgāh-e tamāshā naqāb-e rūye turā
zi tār-e sha’sha’-e āftāb mī bāfand
 159
Her mole stole my heart
and I search it in her dusty down.
For thieves hide stolen wealth
under the earth.
160
Thanks to my inverted fortune,
my e orts have a reverse e ect.
The laments of my burning rue
awaken the evil eye.65
161
A hundred taverns are
drenched in blackness
By the kohl that falls from
your drunken black eyes.
162
In the world of wonders,
the veil of your face
Is woven from the
glittering beams of the sun.
163
murīd-e Khizr tavān shud ki ba ĥayāt-e abad
tan az ĥijāb ba izhār-e zindagī na dihad
164
kilk-e man chūn khāmaye mū rīshah rīshah shud zi mashq
līk azīn dāgham ki khaam śūratī paidā nakard
165
kārvān bugzasht u man az kāhlī māndam ba rāh
bahr-e khwāb-e pāyam āvāz-e jaras afsānah shud
 166
zi shi‘r-e man dīgrān kāmyāb u man maĥrūm
zabān chū gūsh kujā lazzat-e sukhan yābad
163
You can become Khizr’s
disciple if all your life
You give not yourself
to self-display.66
164
Practising, my pen came apart in
shreds like the painter’s brush.
How sad it could not draw a single portrait!
165
The caravan left and my indolence
left me stranded behind.
Its bell was a tale that sent
my feet to sleep.
166
My poems delight others
and leave me wanting.
How can the tongue match
the ear in relishing speech?
167
sakht dilbastagī dāsht ba bālam śayyād
tā nashud bālish-e u pur zi param khwāb nakard
168
nīst ĥusn-e bī baqā shāyistaye dil bastgī
bā chirāgh-e barq yak parvānah hamrāhi na kard
169
hīch kas bar ĥāl-e mā raĥmī na kard
tishnah lab murdīm u chashmī tar na shud
170
yārān burdand shi‘r-e mārā
afsūs ki nām-e m - a na burdand
171
mī farastad ba pidar pairahan-e khālī rā
Yūsuf az daulat-e ĥusn īnhama khud rā gum kard
167
So enamoured of my wings
is the fowler’s heart that
His eye catches sleep only
on the pillow of my feathers.
168
Fleeting beauty is unworthy of love.
The lamp of lightning’s ash attracts
no moth.
169
None took pity on me.
I died and no eye became moist.
170
Friends took my verses.
Pity, they took not my name.
171
He sent his father an empty robe:
Thus had Yusuf lost himself to
the beauty’s glamour.67
172
jazāye śidq-e mukāfāt dar jahān īn bas
ki ‘umr-e qātil-e parvānah tā saĥar na kashīd
173
tā kay tū bar zamīn ravī u māh bar āsmān
arĥ-e jahān khush ast ki zīr-u-zabar shavad
174
tan ba murdan nih Ghanī chūn qāmatat gardīd kham
bahr-e īn khātam nigīnī nīst juz sang-e mazār
175
dar alab-e būye tū ay gul ‘izār
āblah pāy ast zi shabnam bahār
172
The truth of retribution
in the world is this alone:
‘The life of the moth’s killer
does not extend beyond dawn.’
173
How long will you walk the earth
and the moon the sky?
Better that the worlds
turn upside down!
174
Ghani, give up your body
bent with age to death.
Except the gravestone
no gem will t this ring.
175
To catch your fragrance,
O rosy-cheeked one,
Spring has its feet
blistered due to dew.
176
dar pāye nihālī
chū marā mast bigīrī chūn khūshah am ay muĥtasib az tāk
biyāvīz
177
Ghanī chū sāyaye murgh-e parindah dar shauq
agar ba khāk biyaftam nayaftam az parvāz
178
sa‘iye rūzī bar namī dārad marā az jāye khwīsh
ābrū chūn sham‘ mī rīzam valī dar pāye khwīsh
179
sūz-e dilī ki dāram az giryah kam na gardad
chūn sham‘ āb-e chashmam bāshad ghizāye man
176
If you catch me drunk
at the sapling’s feet,
Hang me, O prohibitor,
like a bunch from the vine.
177
Ghani, like the shadow of the bird
ying in the course of love,
Falling into the dust will not
disrupt my ight.
178
The search for sustenance moves
me not from my place.
Like the candle, I shed my
honour only at my feet.
179
Tears do not lessen my heart’s anguish.
Like the candle my tears feed the ame.
180
kas ba‘d-e marg giryah ba ĥālam namī kunad
dar zindagī chū sham‘ bigīram ba ĥāl-e khwīsh
181
kujā gardad muyassar ni‘mat-e dīdār chashmī rā
ki migān baham chaspīdah az shīrīniye khwābash
182
raushan zi man jahān u man az bakht-e tīrah dāgh
kay sāyaye chirāg shavad maĥav az chirāgh
183
juz maye bī ghash makhūr bahr-e śafāye dimāgh
raughan agar śāf nīst tīrah farūzad chirāgh
180
None shed a tear
for me after death.
I alone bemoaned my
lot like the candle when alive.
181
How can the eyes relish
the delight of vision,
When the eyelashes are
glued together by her sweet dream?
182
I illuminate the world,
myself darkened by ill luck.
How can the lamp rid itself
of its shadow?
183
Save pure wine sip nothing
to cleanse your spirit.
Oil that is impure robs the
lamp of its glow.
184
hargiz sukhan-e zāhid-e dil-e murdah na gūyam
tarsam ki labam hamchū lab-e gūr shavad khushk
zāhid buru az bāgh ki chūn muhraye tasbīĥ
az chashm-e badat dānaye angūr shavad khushk
185
sarv dar faśl-e khizān mānad bahāl
rāstī rā nabvad bīm-e zawāl
186
nīst shuhrat alab ānkas ki kamālī dārad
hargiz angusht numā badr nabāshad chū hilāl
184
The ascetic—dead of heart; his words
I shall never utter.
For I fear my lip will turn dry
as a grave’s mouth.
Leave the garden, ascetic,
for your evil eye
Might turn the grapes
dry as the rosary’s beads.
185
The cypress remains
intact even in autumn.
Uprightness fears no decline.
186
An accomplished man
hankers not after fame.
The crescent, and not the full moon,
needs to be pointed at.68
187
nishān-e harzih gardī zāhir ast az arz-e raftāram
buvad sargashtgī paidā zi naqsh-e pā chū pargāram
bar angushtash ba pīcham rishtaye bārīk tar az mū
dihad tā ān taghāful pīshah rā yād az tan-e zāram
darīn gulshan nabāshad ūiye shīrīn sukhan chūn man
ba kār-e naishkar śad ‘uqdah afgandast minqāram
Ghanī az gulkhan-e gītī ba akhgar mīzanam pahlū
ki az sūz-e darūn khākistarī shud rang-e rukhsāram
188
dar hamraham gham-e vatan ast
gul-e bā khār chīdah rā mānam
187
My meandering steps
point to my wanderlust.
My footprints, like the compass,
tell of my bewilderment.
On her nger I shall wind
a thread ner than hair.
Perhaps it will remind that
heedless one of my frail frame.
No bird in this garden
sings as sweetly as I.
Pecking on sugar, I cast blight
on the sugar seller’s trade.
The world is a bon re, Ghani,
and I am like an ember.
My cheeks are ashen while
re smoulders within.
188
Grief for my land accompanies
me wherever I go.
I am a rose plucked
along with the thorn.
khandah am dar kamīn-e parvāz ast
kabak-e shahbāz dīdah ra mānam
rīkht khūnam ba rang-e āb-e siphar
rag-e tāk-e burīdah mānam
bī tū bar farsh-e gul zi bītabī
murgh-e dar khūn tapīdah rā mānam
189
āsūdgī ba gūshaye hastī nadīdah īm
jān dādah īm u kunj-e mazārī kharīdah īm
chūn sham‘ buvad manzil-e mā zīr-e pāye man
az pā nishastah īm u ba manzil rasīdah īm
The smile on my face is
about to take ight,
Like a partridge that has
sighted a falcon.
As water pours down the skies
blood drips from me.
I am a vein of the vine slit open.
Pining for you on the
rose-decked oor,
I am a bird wallowing
in its own blood.
189
Peace was never my lot in life.
For a corner of the graveyard
I paid with my life.
Like the candle my destination
lay beneath my feet.
I sat and reached the journey’s end.
190
chūn sham‘-e shab ba giryah u āhi nishastah īm
vaqt-e śahar ba rūz-e siyāhī nishastah īm
191
kardah zi jahān shugl-e sukhan gūshah nishīnam
tā khāmah musā r shudah man khānah nishīnam
192
tā zi bazm-e viśāl-e ū dūram
zindah am līk zindah dar gūram
193
yār tā qatl chunīn bāshad agar hamrāham
safar-e mulk-e ‘adam rā zi khudā mīkhwāham
190
Like a candle my night was spent
sobbing and sighing.
And the dawn promised
another dark day.
191
My vocation has made
a recluse of me.
I have sat home that
my pen may travel.
192
As long as I am away
from her presence,
I live but a living death.
193
If my love accompanies
me to my execution,
A journey to the other world
I shall seek from God.
194
jalwaye ĥusn-e turā āwarad marā bar sar-e kr
tū ĥinā bastī u man mā‘naye rangīn bastam
195
az kr tā sukhan nashavad qābil-e raqam
mānand-e khāmah sar zi girīban namī kasham
196
jān ba lab az ‘uf natāvanad rasīd
mā ba zūr-e nātavāni zindah am
197
mīkunad pahlū tihī az bī navāyān āsmān
dar baghal hargiz na gīrad tīr-e bī par rā kamān
194
The spectacle of your beauty
sets me re ecting.
Composing colourful themes
keeps up with your self-adorning.
195
Until re ection has made the verse
t for composition,
Like the pen, my head remains
sunk in my shirt’s collar.
196
So enfeebled that life
struggles to reach my lips,
The strength of my in rmity
keeps me alive.
197
The sky too shuns
the hapless ones.
And the bow never
holds a tuftless arrow.
just-u-jū az bahr-e rūzi bā‘is.-e sharmandgīst
zīn khajālat āsiyā angusht dārad dar dahān
kāmyāb az jām-e vaslat ghair u man az rashk-e dāgh
āb mīgardad marā dar dīdah ū rā dar dahān
jam‘ kardam musht-e khāshākī ki sūzam khwīsh rā
gul gumān dārad ki bandam āshiyān dar gulistān
bā sabuksārān Ghanī paivastah hamrāhi guzīn
rāh ba sāhil mī barad kashtī ba zūr-e bādbān
198
gar chirāgh-e ĥusn-e ū raushan shavad dar anjuman
dar dahān angusht-e sham‘ az sharm mīgīrad lagan
Remorse is the lot of those
wandering for a living.
The millstone bites its
nger out of shame.69
The bliss of union is the rival’s lot,
the scar of envy mine.
His mouth a well of wine,
my eye that of tears.
To set myself ablaze, I
gathered a handful of straw.
And the rose thought I
intended a nest in the garden.
While journeying, Ghani,
seek the company of the light ones.
It’s the frail sail which sees the boat through.
198
If the lamp of her beauty
shines in the gathering,
A vessel dripping with
shame will the candle be.
kay zanad pahlū ba man Majnūn ki dar khāk-e junūn
sang-e i ān shud marā chūn ustkhwān juzv-e badan
gar falak kār-e turā barham zanad az
jā muru jāmah rā khayyā sāzad qat‘ bahr-e dūkhtan
dar muĥabbat ‘ishqbāzān mīkunand imdād ham
sang-e i ān bahr-e Majnūn mītarāshad Kūhkan
khāk pīzi tā ba kay chūn shīshaye sā‘at Ghanī
naqd-e auqātī ki gum shud bāz natavān yāftan
199
biyā sāqī shabistān-e marā imshab munavvar kun
zi rauzan tā bar āyad āftābam may ba sāghar kun
In frenzy, Majnun is
no match for me.
Not bones but the urchins’ stones
constitute my frame.
Grieve not if the heavens
thwart your plans.
The tailor rips the cloth
to sew it back.
In love’s ordeal lovers come
to each other’s rescue.
For Majnun’s sake Kuhkan
furnishes the urchins with stones.70
For how long, Ghani, will you
sift sand like the hourglass?
The wealth of time once lost
can never be regained.
199
Come, Saki, illuminate
my dark chamber tonight.
Pour wine into my cup that
the sun may shine in my abode.
gul-e bī khār-e gulzār-e khamūshī chīdanī dārad
zabān-e guftgū rā hamchū nā farmān pas-e sar kun
Ghanī faśl-e bahār āmad gul-e ‘aishī tavān chīdan
birūn āvar chū nargis zar zi khāk u sarf-e sāghar kun
200
dīdam ki nuktah sanjān duzdand shi‘r-e mardum
man nīz shi‘r-e khud rā duzdīdam az ĥarīfān
zi shi‘r-e man shudah pushīdah fal-u-dānish-e man
chū mīvaye ki bimānad ba zīr-e barg nihān
201
az baski shi‘r guftan shud mubtazil darīn ‘ahd
lab bastan ast aknūn mamūn-e tāzah bastan
The thornless rose of the garden
of silence is worth picking.
Lay o the prattling tongue
like an unruly slave.
Ghani, the rose of life’s bounty
awaits picking in the spring.
Like the narcissus bring out gold
from the earth and spend it on the cup.
200
I saw that poets steal
each other’s verses.
I am still retrieving
those stolen by my peers.
My poetry has concealed
my knowledge and wisdom,
Like the fruit which is hidden
by the leaves of the tree.
201
Saying verse has fallen into
such disgrace today,
Sealing one’s lips is the only
novel theme to be composed.
202
ba gulshan bī tū abr-e dīdaye mā rīkht bārānī
ki gardīd āshiyān-e ‘andlībān chashm-e giryānī
shavad dar kunj-e faqr az rakhnahāye būrya raushan
ki dard-e khāksārān rā nabāshad hīch darmānī
biyā dar dīdah am binishīn agar āb-e ravān khwāhī
ki az chashm-e taram jūyīst har chāk-e girībānī
chi khush bālidah ast az giryah bar khud mardum-e chashmam
futādah darmiyān-e āb gūya tukhm-e raiĥānī
dilam chūn girdbād az kūchah gardīha
ba tang āmad ba raqś āyam chū yābam rukhśat-e sair-e
gulistānī
202
In the garden of love, longing
makes my eye a rain cloud,
Turning the nests of nightingales
into drenched eyes.
In the humble corner of the poor
the rents of the mat proclaim:
‘The wounds of the dust-dwellers
can be healed by no balm.’
Desire a owing stream?
Come and sit in my eye.
For it has turned every
garment’s slit into a gushing stream.
How well is my eye’s pupil
nurtured by its own tears!
As if a seed of basil were cast into water.
Fed up of roaming streets,
like the whirlwind,
I will dance in joy if
allowed a stroll in the garden.
Ghanī dar faśl-e gul tā kay ba kunj-e khānah binishīnī
sarī chūn khār bālā kun zi dīvār-e gulistānī
203
yār dar chashm-e man u raushan azū anjumī
ū chū sham‘ ast darīn majlis u man chū laganī
būd sarmāye man jāmah u jāni ākhir
jān girv jāmah girv kardah kharīdam kafanī
chi ‘ajab tab‘am agar da‘vaye ‘ijāz kunad
ki ba luf-e sukhanam nīst kasī rā sukhanī
baski dar daur-e jamāl-e mah-e man gasht sabuk
Yūsuf-e Miśr darāmad ba nazar pairahanī
Ghani, in the season of roses, how long
will you sit in a secluded corner?
Rise from the garden’s wall,
though it be like a thorn.
203
My love sits in my eye and
illuminates the gathering.
She, a candle in the midst,
and I, the candlestick.
At last my robe and my
life proved my sole wealth.
Life in pawn, robe in pawn,
I bought myself a shroud.
What wonder if my genius
claims to be miraculous?
Matchless is the pleasure
my verse a ords.
Pale beside my
revolving moon,
Yusuf of Egypt looks
no more than his shirt.
sang dar kūchah u bāzār kamī kard Ghanī
man-e Majnūn chi kunam gar nabvad Kūhkanī
204
hast az khār magar dāman-e śaĥrā khālī
ki na gardīd dil-e āblah pā khāli
‘izzat-e shāh u gadā zīr-e zamīn yaksān ast
mīkunad khāk barāye hamah kas jā khālī
dar gham ābād-e jahān nīst baham ‘aish mudām
gasht tā jām pur az may shudah mīna khālī
205
paik-e sirishk kardam dumbāl-e bakht rāhī
kaz chashm-e man rabūdah ham khwāb ham siyāhī
Stones have disappeared from
bazaars and streets, Ghani.
Without Kuhkan what will
this hapless Majnun do?71
204
Though the desert’s hem
is without thorns,
The heart of the blister-footed
is ever fraught with grief.
Under the earth, the king and
the beggar enjoy equal honour.
Dust makes equal room for both.
None enjoys a lasting joy
in this grief-ridden world.
As wine lls the cup,
the ask is emptied.
205
I sent the messenger of tears
after the eeing luck.
From my eyes have ed
both sleep and sight.
yak tan darīn zamānah bī dāgh-e mātami nīst
kardīm sair-e ‘ālam az māh tā ba māhī
ayman mashav zi dushman shud garchi bā tū hamrang
ātash ki khaśm-e kāh ast dārad libās-e kāhī
206
ba gūsham īn śadā az muqriye tasbīĥmī āyad
ki śad dil mutarib gardad chū yak dil yābad ārāmī
shudam az ikhtilāt-e zulf-e ū mashhūr dar ‘ālam
bar āvardīm ākhir az siyāhī chūn nigīn nāmī
207
dar bazm-e may nabāshad tasbīĥrā zahūrī
nabvad sitārah hā rā dar āftāb nūrī
Not a single soul have I
seen untainted with grief,
Though I searched the world
from the sea to the sky.
Be not complacent of your enemy
though he takes on your hue.
The spark which consumes the straw
disguises as a straw.
206
From the teller of beads a whisper
reaches my ears:
‘A hundred hearts lose their
peace to bring solace to one.’
The company of her tresses
made me famous throughout,
Like the seal’s mark which
owes its fame to black ink.
207
In the wine assembly, the rosary
is conspicuous by its absence.
The shining sun puts all the stars to ight.
208
muddat-e shādi u gham nīst barābar ba jahān
giryaye sham‘ shabī khandaye śubĥast damī
209
didah dar rukhsār-e khūbān dūkhtan khush davlatast
kāshkī migān-e man chashmī chū sūzan dāshtī
210
har sāgharī ki būd pur az may shud u hanūz
gūyad ĥabāb-e bādah ki khālist jāye may
211
chunān nam-e man raushan ast dar Hind
ki naqsh-e nigīn dar mayān-e siyāhī
208
Grief outlasts joy in this world.
The candle cries the whole night
for a moment’s laugh at dawn.
209
Sewing one’s eyes to the
cheeks of fairies is delightful.
How I wish my lashes had
eyes like the needle!
210
Every goblet is brimming
with wine and still,
‘There is room for more,’
cries the wine bubble.
 211
My name has attained
such fame in India
As the signet ring’s mark
in black ink.
 Quatrains

(Rubā‘iyāt)

1
‘uf-e tū ba dil shikast paikān mā rā
śad kūh-e alam nihādah bar jān mā rā
hargiz nashunīdīm ki mū
dard kunad dard-e kamr-e tū sākht ĥairān mārā
2
kardast havāye Hind dilgīr mārā
ay bakht rasān ba bāgh-e Kashmīr mā rā
gashtam zi ĥarārat-e gharībī bītāb
az śubĥ-e vatan bidih abāshīr mārā
3
tā faqr shudah muqīm-e kāshānaye mā
az gard-e amal tihī ast virānaye mā
raftan badar-e khānaye mardum ‘aib ast
imrūz ki fāqah hast dar khānaye mā
4
az baski gulī nabvad dar gulshan-e mā
khāri nazad ast dast dar dāman-e mā
az chashm-e bad-e barq natarsīm ki sūkht
mānand-e sipand dānah dar khirman-e mā
1
Your in rmity pierces my heart with arrows
And my soul writhes under the burden of pain.
Ever heard a hair complaining of pain?
No wonder your waist’s pain amazes me.
2
The scorching winds of India distress me.
O Fate, take me to the garden of Kashmir.
The heat of exile robs me of peace.
Grant me a glimpse of my land’s milky dawn.
3
Since poverty has come to inhabit my dwelling
The dust of hope has ed from this desolate abode.
It is not becoming to knock on others’ doors today
When hunger has arrived as a guest at mine.
4
Since no rose is left in my garden
My garment now fears not the thorn’s prick.
Like wild rue I fear not lightning’s evil eye
For my granary holds nothing for it to consume.
5
ay dil nakhūri farīb-e arbāb-e daghā
ghā l nashavī zi dushman-e dūst numā
har chand ki āstīn numāyad fānūs
dar kushtan-e sham‘ bāshadash dast-e rasā
6
dāram dardī ki hast jānkāh marā
bāshad ay kāsh ‘umr kūtāh marā
har chand ki nīst muhlik īn kūft valī
dāyim tā marg hast hamrāh marā
7
bī faham agar chashm bidūzad ba kitāb
natavānad dīd rūye ma‘anī dar khwāb
kay ghaur kunand dar sukhan bī maghzān
ghavvāśiye baĥr nīst maqdūr-e ĥabāb
8
afsūs ki raft nashaye ‘ahd-e shabāb
sarkhush na shudīm yak dam
az bādaye nāb az bahr-e tamāshaye jahān hamchū ĥabāb
tā vā kardīm chashm raftīm ba khwāb
5
O heart, be not beguiled by deceiving men.
Ever beware of the friend-like foe.
However much the sleeve may look like a lantern
It is ever ready to snu out the ame.
6
A icted with a pain that wears me out,
Would that my life were cut short!
Not fatal, yet this gnawing pain
Will keep me company till my death.
7
A dull mind may x its gaze on the book,
Yet meaning shall remain beyond its grasp.
The empty-headed fail to fathom the depths,
Like a hollow bubble they can never plunge the sea.
8
Alas! So swiftly did youth’s ebriety pass
Before we could savour fully the ruby wine.
We opened our eyes to behold the world
And the bubble burst …
9
hūsh ast ki sarmāye śad dard-e sar ast
fārigh-e bāl ānki az jahān bī khabar ast
dar baiah namī kunand murghān faryād
har chand ki baiah az qafas tang tar ast
10
barkhīz Ghanī havāye farvardīn ast
may nūsh ki vaqt-e bādah khurdan ast
faślī ast ki āshiyān-e murghān-e chaman
az karat-e gul chūn sabad-e gulchīn ast
11
bad garchi damī chand ba naikān binishast
sar rishtaye nīkīyash nayaftād ba dast
az tīrah dilī pāk nashud khākistar
har chand ki ba ātash-u-āyīnah nishast
12
bar ghamzadgān ahl-e jahān mīkhandand
az jūsh-e faraĥba śad dahān mīkhandand
dar bazm-e arb ba sān-e mīnāye sharāb
mā mīgiryīm u dīgrān mīkhandand
9
Awareness: the source of countless headaches.
Blissful is the man unmindful of the world.
Birds wail not while unhatched,
More con ning than a cage though the egg be.
10
Rise, Ghani, for the breeze of spring is here.
Sip wine, for the time of vintage is here.
The season when the nests of garden birds
Resemble the rose gatherer’s basket is here.
11
Evil may spend some moments with the virtuous,
Yet virtue’s blessings will scarcely touch it.
The company of ame and mirror it might keep,
But can soot rid itself of its blackness?
12
Men sco at the grief-stricken
And make fun of their misery.
Like the wine ask which entertains revellers,
We shed tears that others may rejoice.
13
tā charkh-e falak chū āsiyā hast bigard
chūn śubĥna dārīm ghizā juz dam-e sard
mā kāsah na dārīm ki
diryūzah kunīm diryūzah barāye kāsah mībāyad kard
14
chūn dar gham-e Khurshīd ghān bar khīzad
har kas shinvad az dil-u-jān
bar khīzad bar turbat-e ū zi dīdah mī rīzam āb
shāyad ki azīn khwāb-e girān bar khīzad
15
har kas ki ba khwīshtan gumāni dārad
chūn dar nigarī ‘aib-e nihānī dārad
‘umrīst ki dar bāgh-e jahān gardīm
har mīvah ki dīdam ustukhwānī dārad
16
chūn nīst dar uftādgiyam kas rā shak
bar khāstah az chi rū ba jangam har yak
dā‘vaye barābarī na dāram bā kas
ba khāk chirā barābaram kard falak
13
Like the millstone, heaven’s wheels keep turning.
And like dawn, I heave cold sighs for my bread.
Too poor to own a bowl to beg for bread,
It be ts that I beg for a bowl instead.
14
Cries of grief rend the air for Khursheed
And raise tumult in the hearts of men.
I, for one, shed tears on his grave
Perchance they wake him up from slumber.72
15
O you who are lled with self-conceit,
Pause and look for a blemish within.
Years have I spent wandering the world,
A fruit with no stone I am yet to see.
16
When no one doubts my humility,
Why then have men risen against me?
I claimed to be a match to none,
Yet the heavens have levelled me with dust.
17
mastān hamah khuftah and dar sāyaye tāk
az garmiye khurshīd-e qayāmat bībāk
dunyā gūyand mazra‘-e ākhirat ast
ay sheikh birīz dānaye subĥa ba khāk
18
ay dar gham-e nūr-e dīdah chashmat namnāk
Yā‘qub śifat jāmaye śabrat śad chāk
dar mātam-e farzand marīz ashk ba khāk
śad i makun barāye yak i halāk
19
az khalq ba gūshaī nishastam pinhān
mīgardad azīn rāh sukhanam gard-e jahān
tarsam ki digar sukhan shavad gūshah nishīn
az khānah bīrūn āyam agar hamchū zabān
20
tā ghunchah shud az sir-e dahānat āgāh
gardīd zabān-e guftugūyash kūtah
zad lāf zi hamrangiye la‘l-e tū nigīn
ākhir ba durūgh rūye khud kard siyāh
17
The drunk are asleep in the vine’s shade,
Fearless of doomsday’s scorching sun.
Tomorrow, they say, you’ll reap what you today sow.
To dust then, O sheikh, let your beads go.
18
O you, whose eyes are grieving for the dear one lost!
Like Yaqub, the mantle of your patience is torn to shreds.
Let not all your pearls be lost to dust.
Squander not a hundred in grief for one.
19
From men I have hidden myself in seclusion.
This way has my verse travelled the world.
I fear my verse might take to seclusion,
If like the tongue I come out from my cavern.
20
Ever since to the bud your mouth’s core was unveiled,
Its prattling tongue has greatly shrunk.
As the gem bragged of similitude to you,
Its face was tarnished by the lie it uttered.
21
ay burdah jamāl-e tū khurshīd kulāh
rukhsār-e tū ātash zadah dar khirman-e māh
az khijlat-e rūye ātashīnat Yūsuf
tā āb nashud bīrūn nayāmad az chāh
22
ay bād-e śabā arb fazā mī āyī
gūyā ki zi kūye yār-e mā mī āyī
az kūye ki barkhāstah-ī rāst bigū
bisyār ba chashmam āshna mī āyī
21
O you, whose beauty eclipsed the sun!
Whose radiant cheek set the moon ablaze!
Yusuf, abashed by your refulgent face,
Tarried in the well until drenched with shame.73
22
O morning breeze, your arrival enhances my joy.
Perhaps you come from my love’s street.
From whose street have you risen, truly speak?
You captivate my eyes with such a fascinating sight!
 Winter’s Tale

(Maṣnavī Shitā’iyah)

darīn mausim az baski yakh bast āb

shud āyīnah khānah sarāye ĥabāb
ba śahn-e gulistān kha-e jūye āb
numāyad ki chūn jadval andar kitāb
daf az dast-e murib nashud āshkār
ki bastah ast yakh-e naghmaye ābdār
chunān kard dar āb sarmā aar
ki naqsh bar āb ast naqsh-e ĥajar
hamīn naghmah ba mī sarāyad dar āb
‘khushā hāl-e murghī ki gardad kabāb’.
chunān āmad ātash zi sarmā ba tang
ki gardīd pinhān dubārah ba sang
zi ham ātash u shu‘lah uftād judā
bigīrad agar yak nafas az havā
sharārī gar uftād zi ātash judā
shavad āla dar yak nafas dar havā
shudah khushk az bas zi tāir-e bād
zi ‘ainak dihad pardaye chashm yād
In this season when the water is frozen
Every bubble has become a glasshouse.
The stream owing across the garden
Looks like a line drawn on the page.
The minstrel’s hand is without a drum.
It seems the dewy song has frozen too.
Cold has turned water into ice.
Etching it is like etching a stone.
In all this, the duck in the water croons
‘Lucky the bird that’s become a kebab.’
The spark too has been struck by the chill
And has hid itself back in the int.
The spark and ame are together no more.
The chilly draught has torn them apart.
No sooner does a spark rise from the re
Than it turns into a hailstone.
Such is the nip in the biting air
That the moist eye resembles a stony glass.
chunān mardum az āb dārand bāk
ki nihafta ast āyinah rū ba khāk
buvad barg-e ‘ishrat badast-e chinār
ki faśl-e khizān ātash āvardah bār
azān dādah māhī tan-e khud ba khār
ki shāyad bagardad ba ātash duchār
zi bas sard gashtah tannūr-e siphar
na dīdah darū garm kas nān-e mihr
ravān chūn shavad bar zamīn jūye āb
ki bastah ast yakh chashmaye āftāb
zi sarmā damī yāft māhī najāt
ki az tīgh-e yakh kardah qat‘-e ĥayāt
zi bas barf rā nīst parvāye āb
ravad chūn kaf-e baĥr bālā-e āb
buvad akhgar az manqal-e ātshīn
namūdār chūn az nigīn dān nigīn
ravad pāyash az takhtaye yakh zi jā
chū kha har ki uftad zi kursī judā
Scared to their bones now men are of water.
Like the mirror they hide it under the earth.
The means of living are in the hands of chinar
Which in autumn has provided for re.
The sh o ers itself to the hook
In the hope that it might see re.
So cold has the oven of the sky become
No longer visible is the bread-like sun.
Can a stream ow on the face of the earth
When the sun’s eye itself is frozen?
Release from the stinging cold does the sh nd
When it slits itself with the icicle’s sword.
No fear of water does the snow show.
It oats on its surface like foam.
The ember glowing in the brazier
Looks like a gem in the casket.
He who relaxes his hold on the chair
Finds himself skating on the ice.
kasī rā ki dar sang-e yakh pā sikasht
zi kursī barū mītavān takhtah bast
shud afsurdaye dar jahān kāmgār
ki chūn sang-e ātash kashad dar kinār
darīn lāye gil chūn shudī kas ravān
namī būd gar pāye yakh darmiyān
zi bas kard sarmā ba māhi aar
bar āvar bār-e khud az jāye tar
ba sūye falak har ki sar dādah āh
shudah barf u uftādah bar khāk-e rāh
zamistān barāyīm chi bāzī kunad
ki az āb āyinah sāzī kunad
agarchi girift ātash andar kinār
nashud garm yak lahza dast-e chinār
zi sarmā ba marg ānki gardad duchār
darīn faśl dūzakh kunad ikhtiyār
chu i ān qadam sūye maktab zanand
bar avrāq-e yakh mashq-e markab zanand
darīn faśl bāshad kasī hūshyār
ki gulkhan nishīn ast dīvānah vār
And he who breaks his leg on the ice
Is plastered there on the wooden plank.
His joy knows no bounds if a sad soul
Gets hold of a few int stones.
How could one walk on the murky earth
If it were not covered with planks of ice?
Agonized such is the sh by the chill
It seeks to ee from all that is wet.
Every sigh that soars up to the sky
Becomes a snow ake and falls to the ground.
Behold the game that the winter plays
Fashioning myriad mirrors from water plain.
Though a ame hides within its breast
The leaf of chinar breathes no warmth.
And he whose life leaves him in this chill
Prefers hell to escape the cold.
As children make their way to school
They practise skating on the planks of ice.
He is wise who in this season
Clings to the stove like a madman.
zi bas bast yakh zīn bayān bar
zabān zabānī digar shud nafas dar dahān
azāndam ki sarmā dar āmad ba jūsh
na junbad dahān yak nafas hamchū gūsh
sirishkī ki az dīdah gardad judā
shavad bastah chūn ashk sham‘ az havā
magar zīn havā shud khabardār mūr
ki dar zindagī bahr-e khud kanad gūr
azīn pas narānam zi sarmā sukhan
ki yakh pāraye shud zabān dar dahan
Taẑmīn
Hindūye dīdam ki mast az ‘ishq būd
guftamash zīn justjūyat chīst sūd
dar javābam guft ān zunnār dār
nīst dar dastam ‘inān-e ikhtiyār
rishtaye dar gardanam afgandah dūst
mī barad har jā ki khwāir khwāh-e ūst
Narrating this, my tongue is coated with ice.
My breath, it seems, has frozen to make another tongue.
And when the chill turns chillier still
Like the ear, even the mouth turns still.
The tear which drops from the crying eye
Freezes like the wax dripping down the candle.
All this is known to the wise ant
Which entombs itself when alive.
This winter’s tale I can no longer narrate
For the tongue is now an icicle in my mouth.
A Linear Graft
I saw a Hindu drunk with devotion.
www.kashmirsufis.wordpress.com

‘Such striving to what end?’ I asked.74

In reply said that wearer of the sacred thread:
‘The reins of will are not in my hand.
‘“The Friend has yoked my neck with His thread
And pulls me by it wherever He wills.”’
 INTRODUCTION
* All translations in the introduction are by the translators of
this volume, except where indicated.
 Notes

Introduction
1. Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzoo, Majma‘un Nafaa’is (1752), quoted in Ali Jawad Zaidi, Divan-e
Ghani (Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Arts, Culture and Languages, 1984;
reprint), p. 20.
2. Tazkirah s are biographical dictionaries.
3. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, ‘Five (or More) Ways for a Poet to Imitate Other Poets, or,
Imitation in Sabk-i Hindi’, 1998, available online at
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/srf/srf_imitation_2008.pdf. Also
see Kishan Chand Ikhlas (d. 1748 or 1754), Hamesha Bahar (1719), ed. Waheed Quraishi
(Karachi: Anjuman Taraqqi-e Urdu, 1973).
4. Kalim is the epithet of Prophet Musa (Moses), who enjoyed the privilege of speaking
directly to God. Being a shepherd, he used to carry a sta .
5. Tur is the mountain where Musa used to receive instructions from God.
6. Quoted in Shibli Naumani, Sherul-Ajam, vol. 3 (Azamgarh: Maarif Press, 1956; reprint),
p. 75.
7. Muhammad Tahir Nasrabadi, Tazkirah-e Nasrabadi, quoted in Zaidi, Divan-e Ghani, p. 20.
8. Muslim, cited in the preface to Divan-e Ghani, pp. 55–56.
9. P.N.K. Bamzai, Cultural and Political History of Kashmir, vol. 2 (Srinagar: Gulshan Books,
2007; reprint), p. 276.
10. B.N. Parimoo, The Ascent of Self: A Re-interpretation of the Mystical Poetry of Lalla Ded
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), p. 76.
11. G.L. Tikku, Persian Poetry in Kashmir 1339–1846: An Introduction (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1971), p. 32.
12. An allusion to a verse in the Quran which says that God took a covenant from Adam’s
progeny saying, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ to which all replied, ‘Yes, indeed.’ See the Quran,
chapter 7, verse 172.
13. S.R. Faruqi, ‘A Stranger in the City: The Poetics of Sabk-e Hindi’, The Annual of Urdu
Studies 19, 2004, pp. 1–93.
14. Ibid.
15. Paul Losensky, ‘Sa’eb Tabrizi’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003. Online edition available at
http://www.iranica.com.
16. Ibid.
17. E.G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. IV ((New Delhi: Goodword Books, 2002),
pp. 265–76.
18. William Wordsworth, The Prelude Book II, lines 384–86.
19. Paul Losensky, Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal
Ghazal (California: Costa Mesa, 1998), p. 214.
20. S.R. Faruqi, ‘Conventions of Love, Love of Conventions: Urdu Love Poetry in the
Eighteenth Century’, The Annual of Urdu Studies 14, 1999, pp. 3–32.
21. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), p.
19.
22. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Frances W. Pritchett, ‘Lyric Poetry in Urdu: The Ghazal’,
Delos (3) ¾ (Winter), 1991, pp. 7–12. Available online at
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/published/txt_lyric_poetry2.xhtml.

The Poems
1. Muhtasib in the original, translated here as prohibitor, was the o cial appointed to
supervise markets, keep vigil on public morality and prevent vice, including the
consumption of wine. Muhtasib is also sometimes translated as inspector or censor.
Reproaching the muhtasib is a common theme in the Persian ghazal. The verse is ironical
as the prohibitor’s arrival results in something he is to prevent.
2. Anqa, translated here as phoenix, is a mythical bird, often used as a symbol for rarity of
an exceptional nature.
3. The ascetic is the oft-ridiculed gure in the Persian and Urdu ghazal.
4. Yaqub (Jacob) of Canaan, son of Ishaq (Isaac) was a Jewish prophet and father of Yusuf
(Joseph). The story of Yusuf, known for his exemplary beauty, and Zuleikha has been a
theme of several classical Persian works and is originally based on the Quranic narrative
of the ordeals of Yusuf. According to the Quran, Yusuf, thrown into a well by his
stepbrothers, was found by a passing caravan and sold in Egypt where he was purchased
by a noble. When he was brought home, the noble’s wife fell in love with him and tried
to seduce him. Yusuf, however, repelled her advances and became a victim of a
conspiracy that resulted in his imprisonment. Yaqub lamented the separation from his
son to such an extent that he lost his eyesight. Although the Quran nowhere suggests any
reconciliation between Yusuf and the noble’s wife, it mentions that she admitted her fault
before the authorities. Yusuf, proven innocent, was freed from prison and raised to the
position of a powerful minister. Yaqub got his eyesight back only when Yusuf sent him
his robe. See the Quran, chapter 12.
5. Saki is the wine server or cup-bearer in the Persian ghazal who pours wine into the cup
from a gurgling ask.
6. Jesus, according to the Quran and other Islamic sources, was a great prophet who,
among many other miracles, was also given the power to breathe life into the dead. The
verse alludes to the ancient practice of putting a mirror in front of a dying person to
check his breath. It can simultaneously be interpreted to refer to the life-giving
miraculous breath of the beloved which left the Messiah dumbstruck to the extent that a
mirror had to be placed before him to see if he was alive.
7. Jamshed was a legendary king of Persia who is believed to have invented wine and
possessed a cup in which he could behold the whole world.
8. Nafah, or musk-bag, which the deer nurtures, becomes its bane as it is often killed for its
musk.
9. Amulets are tied around the upper arm to keep away evil in uences.
10. Perhaps an allusion to the rampant oppression of the common people by the rulers.
11. Ill luck is often conceived as sleeping and good luck as waking in the Persian ghazal.
12. Since it is impossible to nd a feather of the phoenix, to draw a portrait resembling her
in some measure is impossible.
13. The beloved, by slaying others and only wounding the lover, has put him to shame. In
another reading, the verse can mean: ‘As long as I avoided your arrow, I had to hang my
head in shame like the bow, which is hung down when it does not hold an arrow.’
14. The moon is a symbol of beauty but is smeared with black spots.
15. Antimony is believed to have a healthy in uence on the eyes, improving their vision
and beauty.
16. Frenzy or madness, a characteristic trait of the passionate lover of the ghazal, is
attributed to Majnun, literally, the frenzied one, who in his love for Laila would wander
in the streets and plains chased by stone-throwing urchins.
17. The moth that burns itself upon the candle’s ame is the symbol of the self-sacri cing
lover. The candle, symbolizing the indi erent beloved, nally regrets its indi erence by
consuming itself.
18. The abode of the open sky.
19. Ka r, or the in del, being accustomed to adore idols, is invited to see that the idols of
the past continue to be adored in the present.
20. Treasures used to be hidden under the earth. Narrowness of the grave suggests a
dreadful afterlife.
21. The sky, a metaphor for fate, is here compared to the oven that gives bread when
heated. And to heat itself it burns the speaker’s desires instead of rewood.
22. The prohibitor’s turban, a symbol of ostentatious piety, weighs upon the head of the
speaker like a decanter’s stopper which prevents the wine from being poured.
23. Kaaba, the cubic structure in Mecca, is the object of the deepest religious veneration for
the Muslim. Wine is very often used as a symbol for passionate devotion as against mere
ritualism.
24. The knocker and the crevice usually symbolize the waking eye.
25. The horizon changes colour fast and hence the unpredictability of the rmament, which
often changes erratically to the chagrin of men whose destinies are linked to those
changes.
26. Like the moth is consumed by the candle, the lover too is consumed by the beloved,
but, paradoxically, both become immortal by dying in love.
27. Huma, retained as in the original, is a legendary auspicious bird. It is said that on
whoever the huma casts its shadow becomes king. The black fortune of the lovers is their
ill luck which prevents their union with the beloved. But it is precisely this that they
consider their boon like the moth which burns itself on the ame.
28. Candles used to be snu ed out with the sleeve.
29. According to some traditions, the sun of the Day of Judgement will be extremely hot,
making it an unbearable time for sinners.
30. Probably an allusion to jars of wine kept underground for long periods of time.
31. The habit of poets to sit in a posture with the head tucked between their knees to
re ect long and deep on their verses.
32. The zahid, or the ascetic, prides himself on virtuous acts and looks down upon the
sinners whose records are blotted with sins. He is asked to desist because dark clouds
pour forth the heaviest rains.
33. Pure wine is like the blazing sun as it can dry up the sweat shed in repentance.
34. The verse employs the delightful image of sun and shade. The speaker boasts of his
poverty by saying that his only attendant is the sun which, by its motion, spreads and
folds the mat of shadow for him.
35. ‘Daughter of vine’ is the literal translation of dukhtar-e raz and stands for wine. The
verse exploits the double meaning of the word and simultaneously refers to a maiden
hidden behind a veil and wine that is kept away from heat. See the introduction, pp. l–li.
36. The pen will never get to see her, while the letter will have the privilege to be held and
read by her.
37. Yusuf was separated from his father Yaqub for a long time during which the latter lost
his eyesight in grief. The blackness of the eyes stands for vision and whiteness for
blindness. See note no. 4.
38. Mirrors are polished with ash to give them a bright shine.
39. According to the Quran, when Yusuf dispatched his shirt from Egypt, Yaqub, living in
Canaan, told his sons that he could smell Yusuf’s fragrance. See the Quran, chapter 12,
verses 94–96.
40. See note no. 29.
41. Cypress is a symbol of freedom. Firmly grounded in the earth, it reaches a great height
and does not depend upon the favours of the sky.
42. See note no. 6.
43. The namaz comprises certain bodily movements such as standing, genu ecting and
prostrating.
44. Wild rue is burnt to ward o the evil eye. Ironically, his fortune-star rises only when it
burns, much like wild rue.
45. The Prophet Musa (Moses), according to Islamic traditions, was given many miracles to
counter the Egyptian Pharaoh, among them the yad-e baiza, or the shining hand, which
he displayed as a proof of his prophethood.
46. Camphor is applied to the dead when performing their last rites. The shroud usually
emits a strong smell of camphor.
47. Wandering ceaselessly in a state of frenzy became Majnun’s obsession.
48. Mansur Hallaj (d. 922) is a celebrated Su martyr of Islam. As the name Hallaj
suggests, he was a carder by profession but invited censure on account of his unorthodox
views. To him is attributed the very well-known proclamation anal haq, literally, ‘I am
the Truth’, interpreted as meaning ‘I am God’. He was charged for blasphemy and
executed. Although he has remained a controversial gure in the history of Islam, the
Su s have often interpreted his proclamation as embodying the highest truth of the
Islamic concept of tawhid or unity. Zunnar, translated here as the in del’s thread, is often
used as a symbol of plurality and disbelief, while the rosary is taken as a symbol of
Islamic faith. In some other contexts, the rosary can be mocked at as a symbol of
ostentation or lack of true devotion, and is most commonly associated with the ascetic.
49. Jihad, literally struggle, connotes striving in the cause of the truth. Although it was
primarily used to refer to the active struggle against the forces of evil, for the Su s it
almost exclusively meant the struggle against one’s desires and other baser human
instincts. Holding or arresting the breath was one of the common practices of Su s.
50. The Quran tells the story of Musa and the Pharaoh’s magicians whom the Pharaoh had
promised to reward lavishly if they vanquished Musa at a gathering where all the
Egyptians were invited. The magicians displayed their powers by changing their sta s
and ropes into snakes. Musa, working under divine guidance, threw his sta to the
 ground which changed into a serpent, nullifying the magicians’ tricks. The magicians
recognized that Musa was no mere magician and bowed down in submission. See the
Quran, chapter 7, verses 104–46.
51. The ascetic, often ridiculed in the ghazal as a pretentious gure, is here lampooned for
committing an act of extreme self-aggrandizement. Killing himself under the burden of a
huge dome-shaped turban, often a symbol of self-proclaimed religious piety, is meant to
earn the praise of those who themselves partake of hypocrisy and pretension.
52. Old age, which is accompanied by white hair, is compared to the moonlit night.
53. See the introduction, p. lii.
54. See the introduction, pp. l–li.
55. According to some Islamic traditions, Jesus Christ was raised to the heavens alive
where he will stay till his second coming just before the Day of Judgement.
56. Instead of the wine cups the prohibitor should smash the cup-shaped grapes and hence
facilitate the consumption of wine.
57. The beloved’s mouth is sometimes compared to a passage to the next world.
58. Several verses of Ghani describe the process of poetic composition. Even the poet nds
it hard to capture a poetic theme or meaning that is fresh and striking.
59. Peer-e falak, literally ‘the old of the sky’, is Saturn, believed to be an inauspicious star in
some ancient and medieval cosmologies. It was believed to belong to the seventh sphere
and thus to be the farthest from the earth. In some Arabic texts, it is referred to as sheikh-
unnujoom, ‘the oldest star’.
60. Mansur was taken to the gibbet. See note no. 48.
61. According to the Quran, when the noble’s wife tried to seduce Yusuf, he ed from the
room. Failing to entice him, she chased him till she got hold of his shirt from behind and
tore it o . The tear in Yusuf’s shirt is thus described in this verse as mocking Zuleikha’s
chastity. See the Quran, chapter 12, verses 23–29.
62. See note no. 37.
63. Yusuf, also remembered as the moon of Canaan by poets, owing to his extraordinary
beauty. See note no. 4.
64. See note no. 27.
65. See note no. 44.
66. Khizr, in Islamic folklore, is the prophet who enjoys eternal life but always remains
hidden from men’s eyes, appearing occasionally to a few to provide guidance in spiritual
and temporal matters.
67. See notes no. 4 and 37.
68. The appearance of the crescent marks the beginning of every month of the Islamic
calendar. When it appears, especially at the end of the month of Ramadhan, it captures a
lot of attention.
69. Probably a reference to the handle of the millstone.
70. Kuhkan, literally mountain digger, is Farhad, the lover of Shirin. According to the
ancient legend, Farhad fell in love with Shirin but had a rival in Khusrau, the king of
Persia. Khusrau promised to give up his claim to Shirin if Farhad could dig a canal
through the mountain Bistun to bring milk to the palace. Farhad, to the amazement of
all, achieved this, whereupon Khusrau sent him the false news of Shirin’s death. Unable
to bear the shock, Farhad killed himself with the adze he had used to dig through the
mountain.
71. See previous note. Ths quatrain is addressed to the Prophet Muhammad.
72. Khursheed is said to have been a dear pupil of Ghani.
73. See note no. 4.
74. Tazmin, translated here as ‘a linear graft’, is the practice of quoting one or more verses
of another poet. Technically it is part of the Masnavi Shitā’yah, although detached from it,
and elucidates the omnipotence of the Divine. The last distich is taken from Ha z of
Shiraz.
 Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed in di erent ways to make the

present work possible. Firstly, I express my immense
gratitude to Sunil Sharma of Boston University for his
invaluable recommendations, unfailing encouragement and
kindness. I am also very grateful to my dear teacher
Muhammad Amin who o ered to read the introduction and
gave valuable suggestions.
I want to express my gratitude to many friends for their
support. To my colleagues in the English Department,
University of Kashmir, I extend a warm expression of thanks
for their love and encouragement over the years. Prashant
Keshavmurthy deserves special thanks for his friendship and
scintillating ideas on Ghani and many other subjects. Others
I wish to thank are I at Maqbool, Shadab Arshad, Inayat
Rasool, Sajad Darzi, Abir Bazaz, Abid Ahmed, Maroof Shah
and, last but not least, Sivapriya and Richa, our editors at
Penguin, for their kindness and excellent editing of the
manuscript. I also thank all the friends and participants in
the Winter School of the Berlin-based programme,
Zukunftsphilologie, held in December 2012 at the Centre for
the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, where I read
and discussed some of these translations and found many
eagerly waiting to see the book published.
 My family’s unconditional love has been indispensable
throughout. I owe an enormous gratitude to my parents,
parents-in-law, my brother, Muzamil, and particularly, to my
wife, Huma, and son, Khaleed. It is to them that I dedicate
all my e orts that have gone into this work.
I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Nusrat Bazaz
for her unswerving generosity. She gladly gave her time to
read my translations, suggested revisions and, in the end,
allowed me to have the nal word on them. Lastly, I must
put on record that I alone am responsible for the nal draft
of this work and its errors or imperfections are solely mine.
Mufti Mudasir Farooqi
 THE BEGINNING

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