Pain

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

In weakness's crushing grip, what new infirmity can show?My body holds no space for my stature to even bend low.

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

Blood-dripping is the path, like veins of the insane;The verdure of love's desert, a blood-letting lancet's pain.

Through pain, those dark-lashed ones covertly dealt defeat,Each fragment of bone became a lancet within my skin.

How long shall I write of my heart's deep ache?Should I not go and show them, for goodness' sake?My fingers are wounded, my hand torn and raw,My pen, it drips blood, defying all law.

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

In my chest, the arrows of his broken heart are countless, All the holes have appeared within my core.

One coughs, one dies, Oppression reigns everywhere now.

From poverty's crushing pain, upon my head now cast That single handful of dust, which men a desert call.

My heart burned, my eyes burned, my soul was consumed, What all did love reveal to us, what stains it has bestowed?

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

I could indeed banish every tear, but then,My heart cannot go on without the gift of pain.

Those whom I took to be my very breath,‘Ghayal’, those breaths became decrees of death.

Even in the cure for pain, I die for the sweetness of pain; Those who were thorns in the bark, I pulled out with the tip of a needle.

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

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

Like a candle, I'm a mirror to madness's fate, in wonder lost,How much fire do these heart-wounds for me now raise, at what cost!

The broken heart's pleasure, to suffer the wound of desire; the raw liver's delight, to be drenched in salt.

Oh, such is the fury of your temperament, so profound its dread,That the very pieces of my lament in my heart by sorrow were fed.

My heart burns, why did I not burn to ash in one swift blaze?Alas, the incompleteness of this breath, showering flames!

My very dust awakens in her such profound disdain, Alas, if in her heart I find a place, 'tis but as dust, causing her fresh pain.

When will the thought of death bring comfort to my grief-filled heart?Even it, a meager prize, is tangled in desire's net, playing a futile part.

I wish I hadn't cried out, my friend, how could I know,That it too would make my inner sorrow grow?

Your love built a dwelling within me, / With a heart full of poison, I kept sipping it myself. / When the poisonous woman (or 'witch') couldn't bear it, I died, / Because your love made me dance and I became intoxicated.

My heart is stained, my liver is in pieces, all tears have turned to blood; this love for the beloved is a mixture of blood and water.

Oh, please make your arguments of love, for we have become too attached; My body, which is afflicted by sorrow, cannot endure half of it.

I desired to be freed from the grief of my devotion,But that cruel one, even at my death, was not content.

From my pain, you feel such restless agony, alas, alas!What became, cruel one, of your heedless neglect, alas, alas!

Oh naive heart, what has befallen you?What, after all, is the remedy for this pain?