Poetry Out Loud: Mia Ronn recites “No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

2022 California Poetry Out Loud Champion Mia Ronn recites “No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved” by Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Watch Ronn compete in the Poetry Out Loud National Finals on Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. ET at arts.gov/poetry-out-loud.

[@humairali2566]

She breathes the soul in poem .. fantastic

[@Yams7]

I love the ending tone she leaves us with, what a beautiful interpretation of this lovely poem.

[@Anime10Music]

❤

[@neardylove]

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”
BY MIRZA ASADULLAH KHAN GHALIB
TRANSLATED BY VIJAY SESHADRI
No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.
If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.
Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry.
Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.
Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too,
so easily do they break.
You are a laconic marksman. You leave me
not dead but perpetually dying.
I want my friends to heal me, succor me.
Instead, I get analysis.
Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood
are campfires compared to my anguish.
Two-headed, inescapable anguish!-
Love’s anguish or the anguish of time.
Another dark, severing, incommunicable night.
Death would be fine, if I only died once.
I would have liked a solitary death,
not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit.
You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully.
Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?

[@walterpasipanodya382]

❤❤

[@user-po4bn2th3d]

wow

[@lilaiscool516]

she was my camp counselor

[@Anonymous54965]

I can't find the poem in it's original language.

[@carbonc6065]

... More acting here than a poetry reading ... It all seems/reads the same ... No thank you.

[@cafepoem189]

[@jjr1728]

Shut up. Poetry is ridiculous. Pseudointellectual hipster trash babble is what it is.