The walls have come out of doors
Paths have tapered
and footprints are more
on the slopes of the halfdown sun
jumping over one’s own shadows
to fall headlong
is a real truth, nothing strange.
While dreaming some old dream
eyes know not
that how much water has come out from their oceans.
It is easy to cross a river
but how difficult is to find a toehold on its bank.
While passing from the environs of human settlements
the paths of history are lost in
fields, meadows
grapes-gardens
and in the body contours of women.
Until the new crops are reaped
weathers keep on deferring;
Philosophies are for a few people
and death for all.
Failure to compose a poem
is not the poet’s tragedy
when life is suffering with perpetual death
death becomes a worn out cliché.
Watering the abolished days
breeds nothing but the toil of heartlessness.
Before we are seen in the state of loneliness
from an unseen distant star -
Come! Let’s walk through the main doors of these aged buildings
where standing like sentries’ enslaved souls
have turned into bodies wrapped in dust
and brittle bones
and just with a touch of hand
will fall into their own feet.
The birds of clouds
and fluffs of rains
are not remote from the reach of the weather protectorate!

(Translation from Urdu by Bina Biswas)