No, I Wasn’t Meant To Love And Be Loved
By Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib
No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved. / If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.
Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. / Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.
Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too, / so easily do they break.
You are a laconic marksman. You leave me / not dead but perpetually dying.
I want my friends to heal me, succor me. / Instead, I get analysis.
Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood / are campfires compared to my anguish.
Two-headed, inescapable anguish!— / Love’s anguish or the anguish of time.
Another dark, severing, incommunicable night. / Death would be fine, if I only died once.
I would have liked a solitary death, / not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit.
You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully. / Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?
