Poem of the day-Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Today's poem comes from Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869). It sounds pretty contemporary to me but evidently he was a Mughal Empire poet. Maybe this is due to the translation by poet Vijay Seshadri. He wrote in Urdu and Persian. During his life, he saw the end of the Mughal Empire, replaced by the British Raj. He apparently was a cool guy: a Sufi mystic, gambler and womanizer and proud of it. He has been portrayed in Indian and Pakistani cinema, although not always accurately of course.

Why I like it: how is this poem over 100 years old? It's sad but it's funny. Is he serious? I think he's pulling my leg.

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

By Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Translated By Vijay Seshadri  

Read the translator's notes

 

No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.   

If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.   

Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry.   

Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.   

Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too,   

so easily do they break.   

You are a laconic marksman. You leave me   

not dead but perpetually dying.   

I want my friends to heal me, succor me.   

Instead, I get analysis.   

Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood   

are campfires compared to my anguish.   

Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—

Love’s anguish or the anguish of time.   

Another dark, severing, incommunicable night.   

Death would be fine, if I only died once.   

I would have liked a solitary death,   

not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit.   

You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully.   

Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?