Nazir Akbarabadi

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Leave your lust and greed, O man, wander not in distant lands,
The fiend of death will rob your wealth, there he stands with drum and band;
Bulls, buffaloes, cows and camels, bags, bushels, and cans,
Wheat, rice, peas and pulses, smoke, spark, or brand,
This pomp and show will help no more, when the pedlar packs and goes.

If you are a millionaire with richely loaded stores,
Know, ye ignorant, your rival has much more,
Sugar, candy, jaggery, nuts; salt, sour dough,
Raisins, grapes, pepper, ginger, saffron, betel, cloves,
This pomp and show will help no more when the pedlar packs and goes.

With your loaded bulls and oxen you will travel East and West,
To return with richer coffers, or with depleted wealth,
When enroute, the shade of death, with bayonet sharp will pierce your chest,
Pelf or power, friends or family-nothing will revive your breath;
This pomp and show will help no more when the pedlar packs and goes.
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He who is a king crowned, is but a man,
A beggar and a medicant both represent a man.
The affluent and the indigent both, in fact, are man,
He who rolls in luxury, what is he? a man.
And he who lives on charity passeth for a man.

Sufi, savant, priest, prophet-all belong to Adam's breed,
Atheist and the infidel, spring from human seed;
Those with supernal powers, doing miraculous deeds,
Who by their spiritual might great heights achieved,
And attained to Godhead,-represent the race of man.

Faroun who in olden times declared himself a God,
Shaddad who built his Paradise and imitated the Lord,
Nimrod who by one and all a very god was thought,
A hint to the wise, why dwell at large?
All who were drunk with pride were the type of man.