Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat (Complete Ghazal)

Yeh na thi hamari qismat ke wisaal-e-yaar hota
Agar aur jeete rehte yehi intezaar hota

Tere waade par jiye hum to yeh jaan jhooth jaana
Ke khushi se mar na jaate agar aitbaar hota

Teri naazuki se jaana ke bandha tha ehd boda
Kabhi tu na tod sakta agar ustawaar hota

Koi mere dil se poochhe tere teer-e-neem kash ko
Yeh khalish kahan se hoti jo jigar ke paar hota

Yeh kahan ki dosti hai ke bane hain dost naaseh
Koi chaarasaz hota koi ghamgusaar hota

Rag-e-sang se tapakta woh lahu ke phir na thamta
Jise gham samajh rahe ho yeh agar sharaar hota

Gham agarche jaan-gusal hai pe kahan bachein ke dil hai
Gham-e-ishq gar na hota gham-e-rozgaar hota

Kahun kis se main ke kya hai shab-e-gham buri bala hai
Mujhe kya bura tha marna agar aik baar hota

Hue mar ke hum jo ruswa hue kyun na gharq-e-dariya
Na kabhi janaza uthta na kahin mazaar hota

Ise kaun dekh sakta ke yagana hai woh yakta
Jo dooi ki boo bhi hoti to kahin do chaar hota

Yeh masail-e-tasawwuf yeh tera bayaan Ghalib
Tujhe hum wali samajhte jo na baada-khwaar hota

It was never destined to be our fate to achieve union with the beloved; Even if we had lived on for centuries, this very agony of waiting would have endured! If we survived upon your empty promises, know well that we knew them to be false; For would we not have died of sheer ecstatic joy had we truly believed them? From your delicate temperament we understood that your vow was fragile and frail; For you could never have shattered it had it been steadfast and firm! Let someone inquire of my wounded heart about your half-drawn arrow; Whence would this lingering torment come had it pierced completely through the liver? What kind of friendship is this, where friends turn into stern moral advisors? Would that someone had acted as a true healer, would that someone had shared our sorrow! Blood would have dripped ceaselessly from the veins of solid rock, If that which you deem mere grief had flared as a spark of divine fire! Though this grief is soul-devouring, where could we escape when the heart still beats? If it were not the grief of romantic love, it would have been the bitter struggle of livelihood! To whom can I express the truth that the night of sorrow is a dreadful curse? Why would death have troubled me at all had it struck but once and for all? Since we were doomed to be disgraced in death, why were we not drowned in the river? Then no funeral cortege would have risen, nor would any tomb mark our bones! Who could ever behold Him, for He is Peerless, Unique, and One? If there were even a scent of duality in existence, somewhere He would have been encountered face to face! These profound mysteries of Sufi mysticism, and this eloquence of yours, O Ghalib! We would have venerated you as an enlightened saint, had you not been a wine-drinker!