Melancholy

Truly, my state, oh friend, is now like a funeral bier.Yesterday too I stood at a shrine, today too I stand here!

From weakness, O tears, naught in my body remains,The blood that reached no skirt, as mere color, it flew.

O heart, devise some other way to die, I say, For I no longer merit the killer's hand and arm.

In life, they would dismiss me from the gathering, Let me see now that I've died, who lifts me up?

My weeping craves the ruin of my dwelling, From doors and walls, a wilderness seems to drip.

Throughout my life, the dread of death remained;Even before I could fly, my colour was already drained.

O comfort, step aside! O order, be gone! A flood of tears today pursues every wall and door.

They say people live their lives on hope, I, myself, have no hope left to live.

Weakness has killed the core of the heart, Calamity has come to our life, to our home.

No hope ever comes to fruition, No path or solution appears in sight.

The days have passed when nights were cut from the drains, Now the unsteady 'Mir'-sahib groans something.

That restless, struggling prey with flapping wings at last did die,The arrow's eye became, at length, a festering sore in sorrow's eye.

The heart's lament scattered the pages of its fragments to the wind,The only memorial of that wail was a diwan without binding.

Where once was the school of the city and empire's glory, Today only a single chamber remains in these khanqahs.

I have left the school and the khanqah, filled with sorrow; no life, no love, no gnosis, nor the glance.

To whom can I convey what this night of sorrow is? It's a most dreadful bane.What harm would dying be to me, if it were but a single pain?

Each drop a blueprint for a new, festering sore,My blood within my body, from pain's relish, is never free more.

What glory did Ghalib possess in his homeland, that in exile he might find acclaim? I am, without reserve, that handful of dry straw, not even found for the furnace's flame.

Is it only sighs and tears that forever linger here, Or is it the breeze of rain that falls every day?

From the wild frenzy of a passion's tumultuous roar, I read disgrace in tears spilled on the desert's floor.

Laila's tent is dark, Majnun's home a ruin stark,Such fervent desolation, from love's visible mark.

It is not now, 'Mir', that the chest burns, Having consumed all the heart, oh stain.

Someone or another suddenly died in life,Not a single day passed, alas, without an accident.

Directions mourn and a desolate cry resounds, This night is a terrace of restlessness, do you know?

Even today, the storms shed tears,They have drowned me in my prime youth.

Those colours which I had cherished like life itself,Those colours turned out to be guests for just one night.

'Ghayal,' the day, having donned its own faded veil, Is stitching a white shroud! Just look at the night!

Oath upon oath, I vow not to cry! Yet tears keep welling, I cannot deny.

The silence of the stars makes me cry at night, My love is unique, and my sorrows are unique.

My poems, O Iqbal, why aren't they dear to me? / These streams of pain from my broken heart are too much.