The Modern Period of Kashmiri Poetry

Pirzada Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor

                                              The Lightning

Who clothed your delicate body in red?

Resplendent Lightning! Let us see the whole of you

You manifested yourself at Ahrabal.

And you created an uproar alike in villages and towns:

You came down Kahanabal

Scattering the essence of love

Ringlets like writhing snakes look beautiful behind your neck.

Your body is crooked like somebody’s locks

Your golden hair is woven into plaits

Dressed in garments covered with mica you go at dusk,

To your father-in-law’s house, but

Like a girl (newlywed), you immediately run back

To your parental home

You manifested yourself

From behind the folds of your veils,

You viewed the world all at one glance;

And quietly hid yourself

What wise man revealed to you the mystery of existence

That this word is not the proper abode for the beautiful

Is that, why, O charming creature,

You kept yourself back?

If you did not consider this world good

why do you look back to it again and again?

What temptation attracts you, O beautiful flower?

Why, from top to bottom, are you dressed in red?

What does it signify?

Are these clothes perhaps stained

With the blood of someone wrongfully slain?

Now and then you guide the travelers

Who lose their way in the dark,

You bestow the light of your torch without any price

O flaming torch of the sky,

Whom are you looking for?

Are you playing hide and seek, you accuser of people?

Fate has played a trick upon Mahjur,

He got ignorant men for his companions,

who mistake his gems for ashes.

Mirza Ghulam Hasan Beg Arif

A stirring elegy on the death of a dear child from the mouth of a Hindu woman with the ashes of her son in the bottle in her hand.

O where has gone away my Yusuf, my full moon.

Who tempted away my brilliant day and gave me gloomy night.

In old age I am helpless whom no one would now support.

I spent away my youth for him who left me uncar’d for.

He left me never to return: why should he hate me for my love.

My boundage I do guarantee: now let me be his slave.

My tissues fire of love did melt to feed him with my milk,

This secret would be known to allsince I must wail in grief.

Upon the figures of his father and myself, I form’d his shape.

Within the trap of love, in vain, I tried that he may fall.

O was the fire of funeral pyre my fire of love?

Bewildered am I for my love once shaped his form, then body burnt.

O where has gone away that form that I did shape with my own love?

Are ashes end of beauteous form and burning end of love?

Unworthy was my love, or is this end of every life?

Is nature imperfect, or unripe still is love?

In gleaming water cast him now when fire reduced him thus,

Affectionate Ganges’ bosom keeps for love his resting-place.

Reference: