❝I am afraid of myself, For within me lies an ocean, That hides within its waves, Many a sunken scene. Beneath silent waters, How many voices lie buried, How many wishes lie asleep, How many dreams are pressed into the earth.❞
Parveen Shakir was a Pakistani Urdu poet, teacher, and civil servant. She was one of the most celebrated and beloved Urdu poets of the 20th century, known for writing about female emotions, love, and femininity with rare sensitivity and depth.
Nazm is a Hindi-Urdu poetic form that tells a single, continuous story or idea from start to finish — unlike the ghazal's independent couplets. Drawing on Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Allama Iqbal, Gulzar, and Sahir Ludhianvi, this collection rewards a slower, more attentive read.
❝Whether you come or not, spring has arrived, Flowers have stretched and butterflies have thrived. But again and again my eyes turn toward the lane, From which my beloved used to come in refrain.❞
❝You drift like fragrance everywhere, You touch me but never stay there. I've met you but couldn't hold you near, This is the sorrow that will not clear.❞
❝I loved him like a cherished wish I held inside, He forgot me like a dream that faded with the tide. What can I say about life's old tradition this way — Who was meant for me had himself changed on the day.❞
❝My longing rises to my lips as a prayer, O God, may my life be like a candle's flame, may the world's darkness be dispelled by my breath, may my glow bring light to every place.❞
❝Better than the whole world is our Hindustan, we are its nightingales, this is our garden, if we are in foreign lands, our heart stays in the homeland, know us to be there too, wherever our heart is.❞
❝We shall see, certainly we too shall see, that promised day, which is written on eternity's tablet, when these towering mountains of tyranny and cruelty will blow away like tufts of cotton.❞
❝From the grapes of tender feelings I have brought today this wine, beloved, with my own hands I shall pour you the cup today, let me first offer it to you, then the world shall receive its blessing, before all others, my tavern of wine welcomes you first.❞
❝This leprous daybreak, this dawn mauled by night, this is not that dawn for which we had waited, this is not that dawn with the longing for which, friends had set out, believing we'd find it somewhere.❞
❝Beyond the stars there are yet more worlds, there are yet more trials of love to face, these skies are not empty of life, here there are hundreds more caravans still to come.❞
❝Some of my belongings still lie with you, some rain-soaked days of the monsoon are kept there, and a night wrapped inside one of my letters lies there too, extinguish that night, return to me my things.❞
❝Sometimes a thought crosses my mind, that had my life passed in the soft shade of your tresses, it might have flourished, might have bloomed green, rather than this darkness that is my life's destiny.❞