Better Than Truth
translation from the Urdu of ghazals by Ghalib
By William Dennis
(Page 1)
All PraiseThis stony land of sweet wells is love of the Beloved; But for beauty’s need to see, we could not have eyes. Larks or locusts or singing sand fill each place’s moments: Stunned wonder and insight glance the same back from a mirror. Knowledge knows not what it claims, worship is a hopeless faith; Shaking out napkins, servants cast world and the faith away. His very foot-prints have volition to reveal themselves: Dusty fiduciaries for the union of two worlds. His name on a stone centers creation over the earth, Bending the sky down forever in every direction. |
Becoming in BlackHard men live easy, it’s true, and, yes, easy men live hard. Only man...even women...tries and fails to be humane. What mad-moon gravity sets me full in that direction Daily, by choice and aware, startled when she’s still not there? Her face would coax vision out of the most reluctant eye; Even her green-backed mirror wants to see what it reflects. My wound waits in the grave, while I mourn the death of all joy; Glancing up, my tears embellish an orchard from your face. She swears this binding oath: not to torment my remains more; One so becoming in black is quick to don mourning. |
Your Loss AgainMemory’s tiers all lend The heart their drops to blend. Your door had hardly sighed; I lived your loss again. Age could have saved us; I just Had to poke in your den. I’d question Socrates For you in Plato’s heaven. My birds home on you, Knowing your hawking reception. Not even a tent in the sand... I’m haunted by home, my friend. The foolish young Yeats of my youth, I envy his age near my end. |
Strong VisionExtinguished, I’ll leave, still bright with desire for more living; I smoke in the socket, disturbing my friends of the evening. Height, width, depth, curve, color and brightness enter the mirror Clangorously– insight scattering, judgement muffling. Love’s loosened cinctures slip the veil from beauty, Exposing the tender eye to strong vision. Hobbyist husbandry of the heart has grown profitless For love of heraldic beasts, for love of its native kine. My dear Asad, as we know, humor and love both are cruel; Neither phlegm nor bowel, as we have known, is what it has been. |
That Is ThouSeed dies into the earth as a drop pursues the river; Loss of self, beyond self-preservation, that is thou. At the hill-crest the strength of pines is mere tossing; Now I believe this place was once the sea. Clouds that cast their heavy hair over their faces Seem to sink into the earth in a shower of tears. That you may appreciate the mirror’s polish, Reflect upon the quick-silver wind. Color of the rose, Gulab, steals sleep from the eyes. However desert the land, one must always be looking. |
Like Nothing ElseEden’s covering cherub bars the praising refrainers; Our bare legs stick out all night from the unlatched postern gate. Swarming into my Kaleidestan, the limb of your orb Unjumbles topography I always hoped was simple. Constructive and ornamental, I build on the fault-line; Blood burns like nothing else and there’s a spark in poverty. My silence out-echoes all my living; I stand an untraced name, carved on a thin stone. Any point on any path affords perspective on death, The binding sum, for which we never find all integers. |
This Little WealthIn the Emperor’s pitched pavilion, poets draw their corks; Lord, let this flow not go dry, leaving me sober alone! Brazen day has swung open upon the bright heap of stars, An extravagant dower, such as an idol might keep. Though she speaks the rhyme of birds, though I translate not one vowel, This little wealth is enough, that the seraph’s face breathes close. How grief darkens the night. How affliction alights on my rib. How long the stars turn away from the place where I lie. Refugee status attained was the goal of misfortune; Now tapped channels of confidence are evidence against me. |
Wit AloneThat love I never meet, the one that I can never find; Live like a tortoise, forever, but under these stars, never. Your lightest assurances were my fantasies, you know: A feather that would have tickled me to death, were it real. What your slender shafts have pierced, my poor heart alone could tell; And will this sting infect the wound, if it is left to stay? My marble heart could yield up bushels of the finest lime, If the black heap within me were coals and not simply grief. What use this cup of kindness, which but calls up lost old time? But, O, for that physician hand that filled it through the years. A dervish twirling in the sun must suffer like the rest; If not the torch of love, then living burns us in its lamp. Dunkirk nights: lost in water, lost in air and killing light; Could one live by wit alone, I’d die of stupefaction. Whose eyes can take you in, Solitaire, one of unique kind? Could there have been two like you, there would surely then be four. And why do I spare the millstone, to add to my disgrace The irony of funerals, embarrassment of graves? That saintly smile, Sport, like tapping great books with a finger; We might think you knew some secret, but on your breath there’s schnapps. |
Ornament the HeartI bind myself so loosely in prayer, edit my acts so, I would limp away from the doors of Lourdes, not having knocked. No one dares argue– your mirror does not do you justice; Idols and icons are small shards of pewter reflection. The cry that does not disfigure the lips ornaments the heart; The drop that never finds the river nourishes the dust. Triple-salt your tears– with blood...and sweat run down from your brow, If this is a tale of love, not Punch ‘n Judy again. A child can not see over the grass and across the bends; Standing on Plato’s broad shoulders, one sees the course of life. |
In the Tippler’s FaceWhy did I not dance as flame before the Paraclete’s face? My blood leaps in the face of my vision– such grace! Warmer friends think I worship at the base of my small fire, Since I blow on the sparks that have pierced my poor rags to lace. Many a shape thrown on the wheel is held up to the amphora. Your footfall makes the red wine tremble in its long, curved vase. We trade in ourselves along with the wealth of our pages, Anxiously scanning, before and after, each buyer’s case. The stroke was to fall on me, not on the mountain it burned; They should not broach a barrel right in the tippler’s face. |