The Taste of Pain Persists

Are the chains broken?

Are the prisoners set free?

Are the accounts of pain closed?

Is there none broken by cruelty?

Is there none suffering from hunger?

Does the tiller owns the land?

Are the poets left heart-broken?

Are the flames of poetry dead?

Or lost in increasing din?

Who will now put lamps (of heads) on the killing post?

As the night of tyranny lingers on,

Will a Masiah come again?

Or would carry his own Cross?

Every sufferer of pain

The Urdu version