زمانہ
English title: TIME
What was; has faded: what is; is fading: but of these words few can tell the worth; time still is gaping with expectation of what is nearest its hour of birth.
New tidings slowly come drop by drop from my pitcher gurgling of time’s new sights, | As I count over the beads strung out on my threaded rosary of days and nights.
With each man friendly, with each I vary, and have a new part at my command: | To one the rider, to one the courser, to one the whiplash of reprimand.
If in the circle you were not numbered, was it your own fault or mine? To humour no-one am I accustomed to keep untasted the midnight wine!
No planet-gazer can ever see through my winding mazes; for when the eye that aims it sees by no lights from Heaven, the arrow wavers and glances by.
That is no dawn at the Western skyline – it is a bloodbath, that ruddy glow! Await tomorrow; our yesterday and today are legends of long ago.
From Nature’s forces their reckless science has stripped the garments away, until at last its own nesting-place is scorched by the restless lightning it cannot still:
To them the trade‐wind belongs, the sky‐way, to them the ocean, to them the ship— | It shall not serve them to calm the whirlpool by which their fate holds them in its grip!
But now a new world is being born, while this old one sinks out of sight of men, | This world the gamblers of Europe turned into nothing else than a gambling‐den.
That man will still keep his lantern burning, however tempests blow strong and cold, | Whose soul is centred on high, whose temper the Lord has cast in the royal mould.
Sources and translator credits
- Original text transcription: Bal-e-Jibril — زمانہ — Digital transcription file at commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the source dataset does not identify the underlying print edition.Verified against this pinned digital transcription file; not checked against a print edition.Source
- Iqbal Demystified source list: Bal-e-Jibril — Pinned digital dataset commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the underlying print edition is not identified by the dataset.Community dataset list; not reconciled against a print edition.Source
- Bal-e-Jibril English translation at allama-iqbal.com — Time — Public digital poem page, retrieved 2026-10-06; pinned to allama-iqbal.com commit 82547635bb6b758c45082084b2f152fc453a8056.Translation by V.G. Kiernan; English Translation by: V.G. KiernanSource
- Poems from Iqbal — First edition, 1955Translation by V. G. Kiernan; Published English translations attributed to V. G. Kiernan; the 231 previously imported exact passages remain, with one additional independently reviewed final standalone line at PDF page 100. Each new locator names its exact passage scope.Source