Translations
This page shows only poems with translations by A. J. Arberry.
Payam-e Mashriq by Allama Iqbal, in translations by A. J. Arberry
All being is a martyr to His whim, all life is graven with the need of Him:
The world is clay; our hearts its harvest be; yet is this drop of blood its mystery.
This world of ours, where Loss is born with gain and dissolution is with Being twain.
Of water and of clay a figure fine God wrought, a world than Eden more divine.
O new-fledged spirit proudly hovering! God made thee all delight upon the wing;
Muslims! I have a word within my heart more radiant than the soul of Gabriel:
The water-drop, when it is self-illumed, Amidst a hundred as one pearl shall be:
Ye men of learning, I am in a maze, the mind this meaning cannot understand:
Speak not about the Purpose of this life: Thou hast not sight to see its blandishments.
One day a withered rose thus spoke to me: ‘Our manifesting is a spark swift blown.’
My heart to its own spell is prisoner; the world is lightened by its radiance fair.
Leave childishness, and learn a better lore; abandon race, if thee a Muslim bore.
There is a world concealed within my breast, heart in my dust, by passion’s grief possest.
What maketh Foul and Fair, how shall I say? Tongue trembleth, such a riddle to declare:
O ask not what I am, or whence came I: ’Tis self-involvement I am living by:
‘A child of earth is Adam’, thou dost say. ‘Bond to the world of being and decay’;
When I was dead, and walked in Paradise, this heaven I could clearly see;
Being so distant, heaven-circling sun, what manner to my vision dost thou come?
Heart, in the rosebud view Life’s mystery! Truth in contingent there unveiled is shewn;
The world, that findeth in itself no stay, sought in the street of yearning for a way:
Heart, while thou sittest in the breast of me; better my rug, than sovereign dignity:
In the great throng so rapturous I did play, I struck the spark of Life out of their clay;
I have no roasted fowl on which to sup; no mirror-shining wine is in my cup;
At last from subtle reason he has fled; His self-willed heart knew passion, and it bled;
