Brief Meeting [mulaaqaat]

By Faiz Ahnad Faiz

Translated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
 

This night
Is the tree of a pain
That's of greater consequence than me or you.
Greater because myriad caravans of torch-bearing stars
were circled round and lost
in its branches. A thousand moons have wept away
all their luminence
in its shade.

This night
Is the tree of a pain
That's of greater consequence than me or you.
Yet from the tree of this very night have fallen off
These pale leaves of a few moments,
Fallen off and caught in your tresses, they have become
red, like the pomegranate blossom.
From the cold dew of this very night
These few drops of  silence have rained down
And have made a wreath of  diamonds
on your forehead.

2.
This night is dark, very dark. But from its very darkness
A river of blood shines out, the river of blood
that's my voice.
Light-creating, in the shadow of  this night, a golden wave
That's your eye.

The grief that at this time smoulders
In the rose-garden
of  your arms,
(the grief, which is the fruit of this night)
Let it burn some more in the fire
of our sighs.
For then this grief will itself  become
a fire-spark.

All the arrows
Shot forth by the black bow of all the boughs
of this tree broke into our breast;
We pulled them out and moulded each of them
into mountain-cleaving axes.

3.
The day of the broken-hearted, of those
Whose portion is anguish, will not dawn
on the skies.
It's here, where we two stand,
Morning's bright horizon is just here.
It's here that the fire-sparks of pain have blossomed
to become the garden of  the rosy dawn.
It's here that the shiny axes of murderous sorrows
Row after row, have become
Fiery garlands of the light
of the sun.

The sorrow bequeathed by this night--
The sorrow is transformed now, has become
Our true belief for the morning.
True belief which gives more than what sorrow gives:
The morning which is of greater consequence
than the night.