Just a few return from dust, disguised as roses. What hopes the earth forever covers, what faces?

I too could recall moonlit roofs, those nights of wine— But Time has shelved them now in Memory's dimmed places.

She has left forever, let blood flow from my eyes till my eyes are lamps lit for love's darkest places.

All is his—Sleep, Peace, Night—when on his arm your hair shines to make him the god whom nothing effaces.

With wine, the palm's lines, believe me, rush to Life's stream— Look, here's my hand, and here the red glass it raises.

See me! Beaten by sorrow, man is numbed to pain. Grief has become the pain only pain erases.

World, should Ghalib keep weeping you will see a flood drown your terraced cities, your marble palaces.

I stand in the advancing light, my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees-- they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries, I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines-- carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way: being captured is beside the point, the point is not to surrender.

If instead of being hanged by the neck you're thrown inside for not giving up hope in the world, your country, and people, if you do ten or fifteen years apart from the time you have left, you won't say, "Better I had swung from the end of a rope like a flag"-- you'll put your foot down and live. It may not be a pleasure exactly, but it's your solemn duty to live one more day to spite the enemy. Part of you may live alone inside, like a stone at the bottom of a well. But the other part must be so caught up in the flurry of the world that you shiver there inside when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves. To wait for letters inside, to sing sad songs, or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling is sweet but dangerous. Look at your face from shave to shave, forget your age, watch out for lice and for spring nights, and always remember to eat every last piece of bread-- also, don't forget to laugh heartily. And who knows, the woman you love may stop loving you. Don't say it's no big thing: it's like the snapping of a green branch to the man inside. To think of roses and gardens inside is bad, to think of seas and mountains is good. Read and write without rest, and I also advise weaving and making mirrors. I mean, it's not that you can't pass ten or fifteen years inside and more-- you can, as long as the jewel on the left side of your chest doesn't lose its luster!

Wonder of what "prison" he wrote about and against what "prison" do I have to keep polishing the jewel on the left side of my chest?