Today's Beautiful Gem: A Ghazal by the Mughal poet Mir,
translated by Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam. (Part I)

"All my plans have been overturned, and no medicine has had any
effect. You see? The sickness of heart has killed me in the end.
"I passed the days of my youth in weeping, and in old age
I closed my eyes. That is, I passed many nights in wakefulness,
and when morning came I rested.
"I do not question her life-giving power. It is just the excellence
of my fortune that the first message that she sent me was my
sentence of death.
"We act under constraint, and you slander us when you say we
have free will. It is your will that is done, and we are blamed
without cause.
"All the rakes and profligates of the whole world bow down before you.
The proud, the perverse, the awkward, the independent-- all have
acknowledged you their leader.
"If even in my distracted state I have been guilty of any want of
respect, then it was little enough. For mile after mile as I
made my way towards her, I fell down to worship her at every step.
"What do we care for the Kaaba, and the direction in which we should
turn to pray, and the holy places and the robes of Pilgrimage? We
who live in her lane have said farewell to all these things.
"If the shaikh stands naked in the mosque today it is because he
spent the night drinking in the tavern, and in his drunkenness
gave his cloak and gown and shirt and hat away."

Om s'aantih: Peace! - J. K. Mohana Rao.

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