Paye-nazr-e-karam tohfa hai sharm-na-rasai ka

My gift, to show my grace, is my own flawed and failing shame; My blood-soaked state, in hundred hues, is my pure, pious claim.

Let not your beauty, fond of show, be touched by faithless fame; A hundred gazes seal the proof of your pure, pious claim.

Bestow your beauty’s tithe, O sight, and like the sun’s own flame, Let my poor dervish begging bowl become a lamp of fame.

You did not kill me knowingly, but yours is still the blame; Like innocent blood, upon your neck remains our friendship’s claim.

My tongue’s desire is lost in thanks for silence, its acclaim; It stills the need to speak aloud my helplessness and shame.

The breath I draw, the rose’s scent—in essence they’re the same; The garden’s splendor is the cause that lights my song to flame.

Each taunting idol’s mouth becomes a chain that speaks my shame; To nothingness, unfaithful one, extends your faithless name.

O Ghalib, keep your lament short, do not extend its fame; Just say: I measure out the grief of separation’s claim.

Where striving for a vision ends, true comfort finds its aim; Within the pocket of each glance is guidance I can claim.

To dream of goals in this despair is to accept your game; So do not use your cold neglect to test my prideful name.

The tale of Asad is too long, but this sums up his aim: To bear the endless sorrow of separation’s painful claim.

Desire makes the mirror bold, and sets the glance-game’s flame; Within the folds of longing hides heart-stealing’s final aim.

The game of glances is a charm for loneliness and shame, A stranger to the final spell of intimacy’s name.

The heart that aches for distant friends can find no healing aim In fate’s dark script, which on the brow, has written sorrow’s name.

This helplessness, O Asad, shares in Pharaoh’s prideful fame; For what you call your servitude is godhood’s very claim.