On the last Mughal Emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar

My favourite epithaph, by the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, written upon his exile to Burma by the British colonialists (in their East India Company incarnation)  after the First War of Indian Independence in 1857. You can find a talk on it by the wellknown Mughal historian William Dalrymple, at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/downloads/files/zafar.mp3 

It is a pathetic lament of an emperor who can't find two yards of land to be buried in his own land. The translation below does grave injustice to the beauty of Urdu poetry, but is the best I could find.

The British buried him in the dark, near the Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). Is it surprising that the Indian politician and ambassador to the United Nations, Krishna Menon, when told that the sun never set on the British empire, retorted, because God does not trust Englishmen in the dark.

Here it is:

Lagtaa nahin hai dil meraa ujday dayaar mein
kis ki bani hai aalam-e-naa_paayedaar mein
(My heart can't find peace, in this ruined land

Who has ever felt complete in this fleeting world)

kah do in hasraton se kahin aur jaa basein
itani jagah kahaan hai dil-e-daagdaar mein
(Tell these gentlemen, they should go live somewhere else

There is no space left for them in this broken heart)

umr-e-daraaz maang kar laaye they chaar din
do arzoo mein kaT gaye do intezaar mein
(I had asked for a long life, a life of four days. 

I got two spent in hoping, and two in waiting)

kitnaa hai bad_naseeb "Zafar" dafn key liye
do gaz zamin bhi na mili kuu-e-yaar mein
(How unfortunate is 'Zafar', that to be buried

He can't find two yards of land, in his beloved land)

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