लब पे आती है दुआ

लब पे आती है दुआ बन के तमन्ना मेरी
ज़िंदगी शमा की सूरत हो ख़ुदाया मेरी!
दूर दुनिया का मिरे दम से अंधेरा हो जाए!
हर जगह मेरे चमकने से उजाला हो जाए!
हो मिरे दम से यूं ही मेरे वतन की ज़ीनत

जिस तरह फूल से होती है चमन की ज़ीनत
ज़िंदगी हो मिरी परवाने की सूरत या-रब
इल्म की शमा से हो मुझ को मोहब्बत या-रब
हो मिरा काम ग़रीबों की हिमायत करना
दर्द-मंदों से ज़ईफ़ों से मोहब्बत करना
मिरे अल्लाह! बुराई से बचाना मुझ को
नेक जो राह हो उस रह पे चलाना मुझ को

- अल्लामा इक़बाल

How to Do Absolutely Nothing

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin

but: Do not take your walking shoes.

Don’t take any clothes you’d wear

anyplace anyone would see you.

Don’t take your rechargeables.

Take Scrabble if you have to,

but not a dictionary and no

pencils for keeping score.

Don’t take a cookbook

or anything to cook.

A fishing pole, ok

but not the line,

hook, sinker,

leave it all.

Find out

what’s

left.

--- Barbara Kingsolver

The City

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

---  C P Cavafy (Translated by Edmund Keeley)