Allama M. Iqbal: Poems From Iqbal a translation by V. G.

Kiernan

Allama Muhammad Iqbal was acknowledged during his lifetime as the most important poet of Muslim
India in the twentieth century, both for the quality of his verse and for the influence exercised by his
ideas. Since his death in 1938, his fame has continued to grow and has reached the West through a
number of English studies and translations. Most of the latter have been about his philosophical poetry
in Persian. This volume contains a rendering in English of over a hundred poems chosen from the four
collections of Iqbal’s poetry written in Urdu, which include religious, lyrical, satirical and other themes.
The English versions are accompanied by the original text.

V. G. Kiernan (1913–2009) was a pupil of the Manchester Grammar School, and then of Trinity College,
Cambridge. He then went on to undertake research work in modern diplomatic history, and won a
College Fellowship. He was in India for eight years before the Partition, involved in radio broadcasting
during the war, and in teaching at the Aitchison College in Lahore. During his time there he got to know
Faiz Ahmed Faiz and other Urdu writers, and began his verse translations of Iqbal, who had died recently
in Lahore, and of Faiz. In later years he was given a Personal Chair in Modern History at the University of
Edinburgh, where he wrote a number of books and essays on Asian and European history, and on
English Literature.

http://www.amiqbalpoetry.com/2011/11/chaand.html

The Moon

My desert from your native land how many a league divides!

Yet by your power the waters of my heart feel these rough tides.

To what far gathering are you bound, from what far gathering come?

Your face is blanched, as if from journyings long and wearisome.

You in thy universe all light, and I all darkness, share

One destiny together in our valley of despair;

I burn in a flame of longing, all! burn for the gift of sight,

And you, all scared with fires of longing, beg the sun for light;

And if your footsteps cannot stray from one fixed circle's bound,

I too move in one circle as a compass-hand moves round.

You roam forlorn life's path to whose dull griefs I too am doomed.
You shining through creation’s throng, I in my flame consumed ;

A long road lies before me and a long road waits for you;

The silence of your thronging skies is here in my heart too.

My nature is like yours, you who were born to seek, to rove.

Though yours are silver rays—the light that guides my feet is love.

I too dwell among many: if you go companionless

Amid the company of heaven, I know your loneliness;

And when for you the blaze of dawn proclaims extinction, I

Drown with you in the crystal glory of eternity.

And yet, yet, radiant moon ! we are not of one race ; it is

No heart like your heart diat can feel and tell its miseries.

Though you are all of light, and I of darkness made, you are

Still far from thirst of consciousness, a thousand journeys far;

Before my soul the path lies clear in view that it must trace—

No gleam of knowledge such as mine will ever light your face.