Ishrat Afreen - Ghazal

Hands, picking cotton - how I love those hands
A perfect metaphor for the love of the land.

They had battled with stormy seas, all night long,
When, defeated, those strange folk, reached the land.

Like a fragrant bonfire the garden glowed for me
Like stationary sparks the flowers glowed for me

Those eyes wrung dry, that can't have been me
Dearer than your life, that can't have been me

That very night such torrents of rain had to pour
When my crumbling home was assaulted as never before.

[Translated by Rukhsana Ahmad ]

Ishrat Afreen

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ghazal-26/