Ghazal No. 5

This is my way of finding in this company a confidant: I sing ghazals and through them I convey the message of my Friend.

In that peculiar privacy where speech acts as a veil I let my heart speak in the language of the eyes.

In order to cleanse it and make it fit to see Your face, I wash my sight with tears.

Though my affairs are tied up in a knot, just like a bud, I grow with a bud’s eagerness to witness the sun’s glory.

My being is a wave, which fears no flood. Do not think that I seek a shore while swimming in the sea of life.

He is to me what sight is to the eye. Even at the farthest remove I always am with Him.

He painted on my eye’s screen the picture of a world. It is as if I were under a magic-maker’s spell.

Its dome with its doors shut cannot contain me. I am a thorn in the side of this ancient sky.

The joy of being on the wing will not let me rest in my nest. One moment on a tree branch, the next I am on the stream’s brink.