lagta nahin hai dil mera ujDe dayar mein
Bahadur Shah Zafar
A Free Translation by
Saad Inshrah
Jamshedpur, Jharkhand India
lagtā nahīñ hai dil merā ujḌe dayār meñ
kis kī banī hai ālam-e-nā-pā.edār meñ
in hasratoñ se kah do kahīñ aur jā baseñ
itnī jagah kahāñ hai dil-e-dāġh-dār meñ
kāñToñ ko mat nikāl chaman se o bāġhbāñ
ye bhī guloñ ke saath pale haiñ bahār meñ
bulbul ko bāġhbāñ se na sayyād se gila
qismat meñ qaid likkhī thī fasl-e-bahār meñ
kitnā hai bad-nasīb 'zafar' dafn ke liye
do gaz zamīn bhī na milī kū-e-yār meñ
My heart has no repose
My heart has no repose
in the derelict abode.
Who is competent to stay
in this unstable world.
Tell these longings
to go and dwell somewhere else,
where is the room
in this stained heart.
Don’t banish the thorns
from the yard, O Gardner!
They, too, were nursed
with the roses in glory!
The nightingale has complaints
neither with the gardener nor with the trapper.
In destiny, imprisonment was penned
in the glory of the spring.
How unfortunate is ‘Zafar’,
for the sake of burial,
didn’t even get two yards of land
in the street of the beloved.
