this has been interesting, Doug. But does anyone feel, like me, that
Ahmad's 'transliterations' are often, if not usually, much more
'poetic' than the various translations by the (North American) poets?
Ahmad's lines always seem to me to have what must be the strength,
directness and astringency of the Ghalib, but which tend to get
poeticised in various ways, not least formally, in the translations
or adaptations. The variations in length, parenthetical alternatives,
grammatical oddities, etc of Ahmad's text all seem to me to only
enhance the formal idea of the ghazal he is translating. The actual
translations seem so embarrassingly 'poetic' by comparison.
Philip
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