|
16. |
Lovely, oh Lord, this fleeting world; but why
Must the frank heart, the quick brain, droop and sigh? |
Though usury mingle somewhat with his godship,
The white man is the world’s arch-deity; |
His asses graze in fields of rose and poppy:
One wisp of hay to genius You deny; |
His Church abounds with roasts and ruby wines:
Sermons and saws are all Your mosques supply. |
Your laws are just, but their expositors
Bedevil the Koran, twist it awry; |
Your paradise no-one has seen: in Europe
No village but with paradise can view. |
Long, long have my thoughts wandered about heaven;
Now in the moon’s blind caverns let them sty! |
I, dowered by Nature with empyreal essence,
Am dust—but not through dust does my way lie; |
Nor East, nor west my home, nor Samarkand,
Nor Ispahan nor Delhi; in ecstasy, |
God-filled, I roam, speaking what truth I see—
No fool for priests, nor yet of this age’s fry. |
My folk berate me, the stranger does not love me:
Hemlock for sherbet I could never cry; |
How could a weigher of truth see Mount Damawand
And think a common refuse-heap as high? |
In Nimrod’s fire faith’s silent witness, not
Like mustard-seed in the grate, burned splutteringly— |
Blood warm, gaze keen, right-following, wrong-forswearing,
In fetters free, prosperous in penury, |
In fair of foul untamed and light of heart—
Who can steal laughter from a flower’s bright eye? |
—Will no one hush this too proud thing Iqbal
Whose tongue God’s presence-chamber could not tie! |
Translated by: V.G. Kiernan |
Home