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Mirza Ghalib English Translations 2

MIRZA GHALIB ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

Urdu poems about life, passion, pain, night, sleep, thought, longing, laments, death & the heart.

I long to embrace her, Ghalib,
whose thought is the rose in its dress of petals.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Wholly pledged to passion amid mundane life,
I worship lighting, lament the torched harvest.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Nights, sleep and composure are his,
who sleeps entwined in your disheveled mane.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

As a single ray of sunlight damns the dew to oblivion,
so I’m destroyed by a single kind glance.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

When I see her, my face lights up;
thus she thinks the patient is cured.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

There’s no cure for passion, Ghalib. It’s the fire
that, ignited won’t burn, and, extinguished, refuses to die.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

There, the arrogance of airs and appearances. Here, simple modesty.
If I were to meet her on the thoroughfare, would she invite me to her soiree?
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

I understood the merits of decorum and asceticism,
but wanted no part of them.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

How could I have escaped,
when the sky spread its nets of stars?
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

An arrowless quiver, no hunter lying in ambush?
I’m content in my corner of the cage.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Where does one plant the second footstep of longing, Lord,
when the first found an infinite desert?
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Inquire with my heart about your negligent archery:
since there’s an arrow in my liver rather than higher.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Having murdered me, she foreswore further cruelty.
Such is her “repentance.”
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Thanks to passion, I developed a taste for life,
but seeking a cure for pain, I found pain beyond cure.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Due to weakness my weeping became sighs.
Thus I learned water can evaporate.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

To erase the thought of your elegant fingers
was to rip the fingernail from its flesh.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

Rain pouring down from spring clouds
is like weeping in grief at death’s separation.
—Mirza Ghalib, translation by Michael R. Burch

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