Poems

There Was a Time When I Loved Alone

Notes

Translator's note: This is a love poem. The poet nostalgically remembers the moments when she was in love yet due to the grief experienced through this love pretends that this experience has turned into a distant memory. Love, therefore, turns into a complicated riddle, a flower which has been eaten by the snakes of time and finally a curse which has changed her destiny lines. It might be difficult to capture the abab rhyme scheme of each couplet in original Urdu version when translating it into English and maintain the past tense through out the poem.