Translation of Ibn-E-Insha’s Sestet – ”This Child, Whose Child is It?”

یہ بچہ کیسا بچہ ہے

یہ بچہ کالا کالا سا

یہ کالا سا مٹیالا سا

یہ بچہ بھوکا بھوکا سا

یہ بچہ سوکھا سوکھا سا

یہ بچہ کس کا بچہ ہے

Translation :

This child, what kind of a child is it?

This ashen innocent visage,

this soot hued face, dirtied semblance,

This esurient child,

emaciated in flesh, emaciated in bone,

This child…whose child is it?

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About the poet: Sher Muhammad Khan, better known by his pen name Ibn-e-Insha, was a Pakistani Urdu poet, humorist, travelogue writer and newspaper columnist. His poems teem with notions of meliorism and embody the sense of empathy through and through.