Click here for background and on any passage for word meanings and explanatory discussion. mustafa zaidi (1929-1970) was a great poet with a controversial personal life and death. He was a progressive and wrote very subtly about orthodoxy and restrictive conventional mores. Here he writes about progress/evolution of knowledge, the struggle and beautifully expresses being at peace with the fact that we still don’t know the “secrets of the universe”.
1
yuN to is vaqt ke phaile hue sannaaTe¹ meN
raat ke seene se kitne hi gajar² phooTe haiN    1.stillness, silence 2.clock tower bell
In the expanse of stillness of Time, so many times has the tower clock rung out, announcing the hour. The poet pictorializes the passage to time, through the darkness of ignorance.
2
aql¹ ko aaj bhi hai tishna-labi² ka iqraar³
saikRoN jaam⁴ uThe, saikRoN dil TooTe haiN    1.mind, intellect 2.thirsty lips 3.admission, acceptance 4.cup
Over this passing time, millions of cups (of wine of knowledge) were served up, millions of hearts were disappointed. To this day intellect admits that it is still thirsty.
3
kis ko maaloom ke ajdaad¹ pe kya kuchh guzri
KhooN se aalooda² haiN is raah pe qadmoN ke nishaaN    1.forebears, ancestors 2.smeared, drenched
Who knows what our forebears suffered. The footsteps on this pathway (of knowledge/progress) are stained with blood. Either the forebears were bleeding because of the injuries of their effort to uncover knowledge or they were bleeding because they were persecuted by orthodoxy or the powerful.
4
inhiN raahoN se paiambar¹ bhi gaye mulhid² bhi
inhiN raahoN pe bhaTakta raha bebas³ insaaN    1.messenger (of god) 2.atheist 3.helpless
These are the very paths (of knowledge/progress) over which divine messengers as well as atheist thinkers passed. (They were all persecuted and bled). These are the pathways through which the helpless human wandered/searched (for truth).
5
zindagi ek sataaye¹ hue taa’er² ki tarah
phaRphaRaati rahi taareeKh ki zaNjeeroN meN     1.tortured, captured 2.bird
Life (struggling to free itself with knowledge) struggled to free itself from the bondage of the chains of history like a captured bird flapping its wings.
6
aur suqraat¹ o falatoon² o arastu³ ka lahu⁴
raNg bharta raha lamhaat⁵ ki tasveeroN meN     1.Socrates 2.Plato 3.Aristotle 4.blood 5.moments, time
And the blood of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle painted/coloured the picture of time. They provided meaning and perspective.
7
kaun se jaal na Daale gaye har markaz¹ par
kya jiyaale² the ke jo maa’el³-e parvaaz⁴ rahe     1.centre, point 2.daring 3.inclined towards 4.flight
Every kind of web/net was thrown at every point. But they (the thinkers/philosophers) were daring and kept flying (into the unknown).
8
abadiyyat¹ ke nishaaN lamha-e-naazuk² ke nuqoosh³
bashariyaat⁴ ke liye raaz the aur raaz rahe    1.eternity, the end of time 2.delicate moment, the beginning of time 3.sketches, marks, signs 4.humanity, human mind
But the signs of beginning and end of time remained elusive, the human brain could not grasp them. The implication is that progress needs to continue.