Jab tak dahan-e-zakhm na paida kare koi

Until a wound can learn to form a mouth and speak, how can one find a path of words with you to seek?

The world is dust from Majnun's wild and desolate despair; how long can one keep dreaming of the strands of Laila's hair?

Your grace is not bestowed on simple melancholy's art; one has to turn to pain itself to find a place inside a heart.

My friend, don't scold me for the tears that from my eyes now start; for one must someday find a way to untie the knotted heart.

When even a torn soul could not make you inquire or ask, what use is there in tearing one's own clothes, a pointless task?

Each thorn now holds a rose-branch, fed by blood my heart has shed; how long can one go gardening in desert lands instead?

The failure of the gaze becomes a sight-destroying blaze; you are not one to be made spectacle for an idle gaze.

Each stone and brick's an oyster for a pearl that's crushed apart; there is no loss in bargains struck with madness from the start.

My life was spent just waiting for your trial of my faith; where is the time for one to long for you, a fleeting wraith?

My own creative spirit breeds a wildness born of strife; this is a pain that one is bound to bring into one's life.

For idle madness, beating one's own head is its chief task; but when one's hands are broken, what more is there one can ask?

The glowing candle of true verse is still a distant art, Asad; for first a poet must create a molten, burning heart.

Where is the wild despair to write a self-effacing plea, to make all being mean the bird that never came to be?

All that exists is lost within your playful eyebrow's sway; one ought to put one's eyes upon a shelf to see the way.

The world's expanse is far too small to hold the tears I've wept; where is a desert vast enough for rivers to be kept?

That playful one, Asad, is proud of beauty's peerless cast; one ought to show her a mirror, then shatter it at last.