Love Long Past (Pehli Si Mohabbat -Faiz Ahmed Faiz) Poem by Elizabeth Kurian

Ask me not, my beloved, for the love long past
I thought your presence filled life with radiance

If I have your grief, why struggle with the world's woes?


To springtime on earth your face lends permanence,

What does the world hold, but your eyes!

If I could have you, destiny would bow low,

It was not thus, I merely wished it would be so

Other sorrows exist in the world, apart from love

Other joys too, apart from the ecstasy of union
Ask me not, my beloved, for the love long past.


Tainted sinister spells of innumerable centuries

Woven in silk, satin and brocades

Bodies sold everywhere, in lanes and bazaars

Smeared in mud, bathed in blood,

Bodies arising of the furnace of diseases,

Pus oozing from incurable sores,

My gaze returns towards these also, what is to be done

Your beauty is still alluring, but what is to be done

Other sorrows exist in the world, apart from love

Other joys too, apart from the ecstasy of union
Ask me not, my beloved, for the love long past.


(Translated by me from the original Urdu poem of Faiz Ahmed Faiz)