I Will Not Live Without You
I came chanting as a mendicant, and bestowed a blessing, be content. I will not live without you, I did say lo, now I fulfill that vow today. No cure was there in my fate's intent, even gifted healers tried and went. In the end such tasks did there present helpless and heartbroken that I went. Pray, what object was it, for whose sake? Everything my heart chose to forsake. Lest I might cast a despairing glance, you passed by me looking askance. In your lane Oh! How I wished to stay, so there, bathed in blood, I made my way. Self-forgetful your sight made me be, from my very self you parted me. Head bowed, constantly, without a fuss, call of love's worship was answered thus. I worshipped you, Idol, to such degree that you, as God, would every person see. Flowers strewn in every shape and hue, in life's garden as I did pass through. I never saw the pain of friends, thanks be! Display my scars, passed on quietly. Life I spent in thoughts of poetry and raised this art to such degree. "What did you do Miir in your earthly stay?" If I were asked, what can I ever say?
I Will Not Live Without You - form Summary
Ghazal of Devotional Longing
This poem is written as a ghazal, a sequence of autonomous couplets that together pursue a single mood of devotional longing. The form lets the speaker repeat and intensify a vow of dependence on the beloved, moving from bodily suffering to spiritual worship and the claim that poetry itself was the life lived. Each couplet reasserts self-abandonment and the conflation of beloved with the divine, culminating in a rueful question about what the poet accomplished. The ghazal’s cumulative repetition suits Mir’s characteristic melancholy and passionate tone.
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