Faces Hidden in the Dust: Selected Ghazals of Ghalib

Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan (1797-1869), known by his pen names Asad (“lion”) and Ghalib (“superior”), is the famous romantic and mystical poet of the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) in India. He is the most-beloved and most widely read poet of the Urdu language, the dominant language of northern India and Pakistan that emerged through the blending of Hindustani with Arabic and Persian. He is known for the beautiful prose of his letters and in fact he brought about a paradigm shift in how letters were written and communicated during his time. His focus on informal yet beautiful writing, rather than flowery formal prose, was his greatest contribution to the art of writing Urdu letters. He is also arguably the world’s most extraordinary writer of poems in the ghazal form (though certain Persian poets such as Hafez and Rumi give him a run for the money). Tony Barnstone is Professor of English and Environment Studies at Whittier College and the author of 19 books and a music CD. He has served as the Visiting Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Bowling Green State University and as the Visiting Professor of Translation in the Ph.D. Program at the University of California, Irvine. He has a Masters in English and Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to Pulp Sonnets, his books of poetry include Beast in the Apartment; Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, winner of the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry; The Golem of Los Angeles which won the Poets Prize and the Benjamin Saltman Award in Poetry; Sad Jazz: Sonnets; and Impure: Poems by Tony Barnstone, and a chapbook of poems titled Naked Magic (Main Street Rag). He is also a distinguished translator of Chinese poetry and literary prose and an editor of literary textbooks. His books in these areas include Mother Is a Bird: Sonnets of Yi Poet; Chinese Erotic Poetry; The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry; Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry; Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei; The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters; and the textbooks Literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Literatures of Asia, and Literatures of the Middle East. His bilingual Spanish/English selected poems, Buda en Llamas: Antología poética (1999-2012) appeared in 2014. He has also co-edited the anthologies Dead and Undead Poems and Monster Verse. Among his awards are the Poets Prize, Grand Prize of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council, the Benjamin Saltman Award in Poetry and the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry. His CD of folk rock/blues songs (in collaboration with singer-songwriters Ariana Hall and John Clinebell, based upon Tongue of War and titled Tokyo’s Burning: World War II Songs) is available on Amazon.com, Rhapsody, and CD Baby. His website is https://www.whittier.edu/academics/english/barnstoneBilal Shaw is a Kashmiri scientist working in quantum information science who did his PhD at the University of Southern California. In the past he has worked on DNA-based computation and nanotechnology, software architecture, and theoretical self-assembly. He has worked as a scientist in the Analytics department at ID Analytics in San Diego, where he applied machine-learning techniques to build statistical risk models for fraud and credit space and at the meditation app Headspace. He is also an accomplished poet.

"Ghalib is the Shakespeare of India, the last great poet of the Mughal empire. His poems have been sung in Urdu gatherings for centuries, offering visions of passionate love in a merging of the human and divine. Tony Barnstone and Bilal Shaw have made them sing in English.” —John Balaban - prize winning poet, translator

• Acknowledgments7Introduction3Ghalib’s Life and Times3The Religious and Erotic Traditions7Ghazals as the Blues 13Opening Up the Rhyme15The Problem with Repetends19Rhetorical Play and Wit20The Poems26Out of Heartfire28The Jewel of the Party29At This Party31The Spell of Desire33Murderess34Executioner36The Idol38A Direction in Which to Pray 39What Comes41Seeking a Gash43Enough46Enter My Dream48Thirst49A Smaller Miracle50Wine Wave52Stay Drunk54The Empty Cup55A Stunned Drop of Wine57Then58The Betel Nut60My Desires Are Legion62The Sound of My Own Failure64The Accounting66Deadbeat Heart67Pawned to This Cruel Life68She Pawned Her Heart70The Dead Lamp71Everything Will Be Dust72Red Flowers Hidden in Dust74Handful of Dust77Dust78Why Sing the Blues?79Why? 81What We Say83Glances Lined with Kohl85Kohl for the Eyes86Hennaed Feet87I Am Human, After All89The Stare91Rupture92The Face in the Mirror94More to Say95Some Life97When the Dead Rise98A Footprint in Paradise99Be Generous100Veil101What?102The Cure for Life104Infected by Love106No Medicine107Where Is My Heart? 109Famine111A Woundgift 113Who Cares?114Heartgrief School 116The Desert Sea118Wasteland119The Traveler121Call Down Lightning122Lunatic Beggar123Madness of the Night of Separation124Blood-Filled Eyes126A Rose in the Dirt127Give Me Lunacy, at Least 129How Tight Is the World?131The Tulip132Dew on a Red Tulip 133Nothing Is What Breathes from Me135No One137About the Translators:138