This Was Not Our Destiny

This was not our destiny, that union with the beloved would take place.
If we had kept on living longer, then would have been kept waiting

If I lived on your promise, then know this that I knew it to be false
For would I not have died of happiness, if I had had trust [in it]?

From your delicacy I knew that the vow had been bound loosely
You could never have broken it, if it had been firm

Let someone ask my heart about your half-drawn arrow
Where would this anxiety/ pain have come from, if it had gone through the liver?

What kind of friendship is this, that friends have become Advisors?
If someone had been a healer, if someone had been a sympathizer!

From the rock-vein would drip that blood which would never have stopped
If this which you are considering 'grief' this were just a spark

Although grief is life-threatening, how would we escape, while there is a heart?

If there were not the grief of passion, there would be the grief of livelihood

To whom might I say what it is- the night of sadness is a bad disaster!
Why would I have minded dying, if it took place one time?

Since upon having died, I became disgraced- why were I not drowned in the ocean?
Neither a funeral procession would ever been formed, nor would there anywhere be a tomb

Who can see him? for that Oneness is unique
If there were even a whiff of twoness, then somehow [He] would be two or four

These problems of mysticism! this discourse of yours, Ghalib!
We would consider you a saint- if you weren't a wine-drinker.