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Virtue and Vice |
A Mullah (I tell you his tale not a bit
With any ambition of airing my wit) |
By ascetic deportment had won high repute,
In his praise neither gentle nor simple were mute. |
God’s will, he would say, just as meaning is latent
In words, through pure doctrine alone becomes patent. |
His heart a full bowl: wine of piety worked there,
Though some dregs of conceit of omniscience lurked there— |
He was wont to recount his own miracles, knowing
How this kept his tally of followers growing. |
He had long been residing not far from my street,
So sinner and saint were accustomed to meet: |
‘This Iqbal,’ he once asked an acquaintance of mine,
‘Is dove of the tree in the literary line, |
but how do religion’s stern monishments seem
To agree with this man who at verse beats Kalim? |
He thinks a Hindu not a heathen, I’m told,
A most casuistical notion to hold, |
And some taints of the Shias’ heresy sully
His mind—I have heard him extolling their Ali; |
He finds room in our worship for music—which must
Be intended to level true faith with the dust! |
As with poets so often, no scruple of duty
Deters him from meeting the vendors-of-beauty; |
In the morning, devotions—at evening, the fiddle—
I have never been able to fathom this riddle. |
Yet dawn, my disciples assure me, is not
More unsoiled than that youth is by blemish or spot; |
No Iqbal, but a heterogeneous creature,
His mind crammed with learning, with impulse his nature, |
He understands both Virtue and Vice
In divinity, doubtless, as deep as Mansur; |
What the fellow is really, I cannot make out—
Is it founding some brand-new Islam he’s about?’ |
—Thus the great man protracted his chatter,
and in short made a very long tale of the matter. |
In our town, all the world hears of every transaction:
I soon got reports from my own little faction, |
And when I fell in with His Worship one day
In our talk the same topic came up by the way. |
‘If,’ said he, ‘I found fault, pure good-will was the cause,
And my duty to point out religion’s strict laws.’ |
—‘Not at all,’ I responded, ‘I make no complaint,
As a neighbour of mine you need feel no constraint; |
In your presence I am, as my bent head declares,
Metamorphosed at once from gay youth to grey hairs, |
And if my true nature eludes your analysis,
Your claim to omniscience need fear no paralysis; |
For me also my nature remains still enravelled,
The sea of my thoughts is too deep and untravelled: |
I too long to know the Iqbal of reality,
And often shed tears at this wall of duality. |
To Iqbal of Iqbal little knowledge is given;
I say this not jesting—not jesting, by Heaven! |
Translated by: V.G. Kiernan |
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