Philip Larkin, "When First We Faced" (Hamara Pehla Milan)in Hindi/Urdu Translation Poem by Ravi Kopra

Jab hum milay aur haath lagaanay lagay
humain khoob patta tha shuroo main kya karte hain
chaand ki roshni main, paalay main
josh-kharosh aur abhaar k lehmoN main
humain ye patta tha k hamara milan
auroN k saath hamari purani mohabbti
mulakaatoN ki bunyaad par khaDa tha.

-to be continued

***

Philip Larkin, "When First We Faced"

When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself-no cost,
No past, no people else at all-
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?