Lighthouse

Tell, O moist wide-awake in my eyes
What epochs of slumber have encompassed you?
It is raining, as if God is shedding tears on some expanse of pain
Why a teardrop from my eyes is
stranded somewhere on those eyelashes?

Tell, O breeze of the shores
In which city, she awaits me?
who had said on a drenched voyage of high seas,
Love is an island; pain is the set of sails

Tell me, the code word of absolution
For, after the ritual of parting ways
I shall see her
among the long rows of sandstone columns
and shall take her in my arms
to bequeath,
all the expanses traveled
just for a kiss

Tell, O glowing spot
Submerged deep in the waters
the aquatic silhouettes of decapitated reefs
are the abstractions of ancient epochs
sleeping on the brinks of eternity
or the personification of
The image-less screams of the slaves are they
rowing their vessels in some fabled voyage

O magical fowl
flying on the last frontiers of time
where is the one
whose reminiscences have erected
the masts of ancient cries in the heart
Tell me, O Earthly star
why do the travelers dream of you?

(Translated from the original Urdu into English by Kamran Awan)