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by Ghalib

دل لگا کر لگ گیا ان کو بھی تنہا بیٹھنا

بارے اپنی بیکسی کی ہم نے پائی داد یاں

ہیں زوال آمادہ اجزا آفرینش کے تمام

مہرِ گردوں ہے چراغِ رہگزارِ باد، یاں

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by Ghalib

In love – she takes to sulking alone. At last,

She gets to feel my pain: this was overdue.

All cosmic schemes unravel steadily. Consider

How the sun sputters like a candle at dawn.

translated from Urdu by M. Shahid Alam

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Ghalib is pen name of Mirza Asadullah Khan (d. 1869). He was born in Agra and died in Delhi. Although most of his writings are in Persian, his claim to eminence rests on his slim Urdu divan (collection of ghazals) and the letters he

wrote in Urdu.

M. Shahid Alam’s translations of Ghalib have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

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