No sleep arrived. No dream arrived.
A boiling fear extreme arrived.
All well-cooked couplets quit my mind.
A half-cooked, verse-filled ream arrived.
With broken lines and missed accents
A faux-poet’s esteem arrived.
To hide my fear of losing face,
My facial boldness cream arrived.
My eyelids, tired, had hardly fell
When knocks of a sunbeam arrived.
Again, to show my debt of sleep,
The redness of my gleam arrived.
Translated from my Hindi Poem, “गैरमहफूज़”
gairmehfūz
na nīnd āyī na KHwāb āyā
ubaltā ik Dar betāb āyā
sab pake sher miT gaye zehen se
adHpake nazmon kā kitāb āyā
TūTe misron aur cHuTe nuKton sang
jHuTHe shāyar kā KHitāb āyā
KHauf-e-zalālat to pehle se thī
naklī beKHaufī kā naKāb āyā
jab wazan-e-thakān se palkein girīn
tabhī dastak-e-āftāb āyā
in ānkhon ki lāl lakīron mein
Fir cHHuTe nīnd kā hisāb āyā
Minakhi Misra 