Suffering

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!

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.

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

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.

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 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.

A stream of blood flows from my eye, day and night, Is it my spectacle lens, or merely a wound's blight?

Whatever existed, perished in the deception of the wave of color, Alas, for the lament from the blood-stained lips of the vocal rose!

From those we hoped would soothe our wounds and hear our plea, We found they suffered more from tyranny's sharp sword than we.

The dust of heart's anguish has flowed in tears, here, to such extent,That every piece of heart in wet eyes, is mired, stuck and spent.

In the blazing fire of separation, suddenly, without her, My heart burned so fiercely that even a little life was not spared.

Were there any arrows of cruelty that had pierced his chest, For the wound I tear out, rivers of pain spill forth.

From the eyes, the gems of blood drip, O heart's deep secret, Or pieces of the very soul spill out every moment.

Then is the tears' weighty pride justified,When pieces of the heart in blood-laden eyes appear.

Do not ask of the torment of that blood-shedding glance,Just witness the shedding of my tears of blood.

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

From whom I try to draw, only dryness I receive; My heart, burning in my chest, has turned to dust and leave.

In the heart, a festering sore again, wherever it wishes, Every direction is an alley of surgery.

Not a single tear fell from your eye for that wound,Which in my chest made the needle-like lashes drip blood.

What is this clamor, this plea from a wounded heart's domain?The morning is an assembly of salt, a cruel gain for the extinguished flame.

You had drawn sorrow's stain, endured wounds of suffering, The heart had lifted burdens of profound shock.

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.

How shall I describe the end of my sorrow's plight?My heart's own blood I drank, no healer sought its right.

O Lord, the wound could not relieve my heart's great pain; Even the arrow from the martyr's breast, scattering feathers, flew again.