C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Ghalib

(Arabian—Twelfth Century)

From the ‘Kafwut-Nameh’ (Book of Rubies): Translation in Dublin University Magazine. Transcribed by Ghalib

I SEE not the strand,

For you all understand

That I pass for a mariner;

None can be barrener

Either of houses or land:

But I sail up and down a Red Sea;

For the wine that I lift to a lip

Rather given to curl in the way called derisive,

Whenever a brute is disposed to dispute

My pretensions to sip

Everlastingly, is, I’ve

A notion,

An ocean

To me and to all jolly bibbers like me;

And the glass is my ship.