LAMENT
ON
THE
DIFFERENCES
AMONG
INDIANS
O Himalayas! O Attock! O Ganges!
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how long shall we go on living sordidly like this ?
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The old lack insight,
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the young are devoid of love;
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East and West are free, but we are slaves of others;
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our bricks go to the building of others’ mansions.
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To live according to the wish of others
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is not deep slumber; it is eternal death;
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this is not a death that comes from the sky;
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its seed grows out of the depths of one’s soul.
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Its prey waits neither for the undertaker nor for the grave,
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nor for friends from far and near;
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no clothes are torn in grief over his death,
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his hell is not on the other side of the skies.
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Do not seek him among the crowd on the Day of Judgment,
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his tomorrow lies in his today.
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What use is there
to produce before God one
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who has both sown
the seed and reaped the fruit in this world?
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A nation that does not relish the prodding of desire
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is wiped off the face of the earth by Nature.
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It is through magic that the crown and the throne acquire
authority
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what is frail as glass becomes through magic bard as stone.
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Under the influence of this “clear enchantment,”
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Muslims abjured their faith and unbelievers, their unbelief,
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The Indians quarrel with one another
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having revived their old differences,
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until a Frankish nation from the land of the West
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assumed the role of a mediator between Islam and
kufr.
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Nobody knows water from mirage,
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Revolution, O revolution, O revolution!
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O you who are always anxious for material sustenance,
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ask of God a living heart
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although its seat is in water and clay
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yet the nine heavens are under its authority.
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Do not think it belongs to the earth,
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it really comes from the highest heavens.
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The world is for it the Friend’s abode
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and gets the Friend’s smell from the tulip’s tunic.
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It is constantly at war with the world,
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the stones on the path are broken to pieces by its strokes;
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it is familiar with the pulpit and the gibbet,
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and keeps a strict watch over its own fire;
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it is only a streamlet but has oceans in its lap,
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its ripples bring tidings of storms;
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it is not by bread that it lives,
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it dies as soon as it loses its vision of the Truth;
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it is like a lamp in the dark chamber of the body:
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it illumines both multitude and solitude.
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Such a heart, ever watchful of itself and God-intoxicated,
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is not achieved except through Faqr.
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O young man, catch hold of its skirt firmly,
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you have been born in slavery, now live free.
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