A few more days, my beloved, just a few more days!

A poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Translated by Syed M. Aslam

Few more days my beloved!

Just a few more days!

For I am coerced to take refuge under the thick shade of repression,

For a little while more I have to endure this useless existence,

this anguish, this pitiable state of existence,

I am helpless to react otherwise because of the

pacifist heritage of my ancestors.

My body is incarcerated and there are shackles on my sensitivities,

My intellect has been forcibly quashed and my discourse has been brutally

suppressed,

And yet it’s my courage that I keep on living still,

Is life a paupers’ robe?

That keeps on accumulating patches of agony by each passing moment?

But, now the days of inequity are numbered,

Just a little more patience ‘cause the days of

suffering are now marked.

In the charred loneliness of this period of ceaseless time,

I have to subsist but not like this forever,

The covert injustices by unfamiliar and arrogant hands,

I may have to tolerate these injustices today but not forever,

The dust of afflictions which has mixed with your beauty,

Is the testimony of the failures of my short-lived youth,

The worthless fervent pain of my moonlit nights,

The ineffective dissent of my heart,

The useless pleadings of my body.

A few more days my beloved!

Just a few more days!