Allama Iqbal's Poetry

The sun, the moon, the stars and this azure sky all around—
Who can tell for sure all this is the world nothingness or being!
The ideas of roads and destinations are fictions and myths
As life is aimless journey, indeed. Alas! Time’s hand wiped out
That monument of the perfections of Ahmad and Mahmood.
His sudden death signifies the decline of knowledge and art
His, Masood’s, who was the most valuable asset
Of this caravan of ours. The indifferent cold manner of
Worldly men moves me to tears. They reckon the dawn wails of birds
As lilting songs! Please! Do not plead that
The remedy of grief for a friend lies hidden in patience!
Please do not say that in patience lies the solution of Death’s riddle!
A heart, howsoever loving and patient, is All the same, a stone.
And between love and patience lie a thousand miles.
(Saadi)

Don’t ask what is fleeting life for, who knows what means
This combine of magic and colour charm?
one born of dust must hide in dust.
But what does it mean? a short lived absence or extinction?
This man, this mere dust of path, has been endowed with artistic taste.
Of this, reason cannot reveal the aim.
Are the heart and vision too the miracles of this very water and clay?
If not, what then is the end-all of man?
The moving soul of this universe is There is no god but God.
Then why the Messiah, the nails and the cross? From whom should be demanded
The blood-money of longings spilt?
For, who is the guilty and what the blood money?
Grieve not that we are in the bondage of this world,
As the heart that we have breaks all magic spells.

If the self lives, death is but a sojourn in life: as love
Tries death in a test of eternal life.
If the self is alive, your ocean is shoreless
And the waves of the Nile, of Euphrates are restless, separated from you.
If the self is dead, you are like a straw before the breeze.
If the self is alive, you the sultan of all existence.
If the eye is deprived of one vision of beauty exposed,
Myriad exposures of beauty compensate for one loss.
The station of a true momin is beyond the sky’s reach.
Below, from the earth to the Pleiades all are idol-houses of Lat and Manat.
His eternal abode is the sacred precinct of the One and the Only One,
Not this gloomy dusty grave nor this exposure house of Attributes!
Those self-aware who have leapt above this abode of dust
Have broken the spell of the sun, the sky and the stars!

Translated by: Maqbool Elahi

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