Daughters are flowers; sons fragrance

Their harmonious bouquet

Fills the garden of one’s own self with the sweetest of aroma

Letting the anticipation and hopes run wild

Making the spring of wishes bloom

As the dusk of life creeps in silently

And the composition of intentions start evincing signs of fatigue

And even the faculty of contemplation starts panting

The ‘fragrance’ grasps the hands of their parents

And carry them across garden to garden

The sons once again fill the lonesomeness of their mothers and fathers 

As well as their steadily diminishing beauty 

with colors

Meanwhile ‘flowers’ emerge from one quarter

And ‘fragrance’ from others

Flickering everyone’s face with joy

Thereby fills the hairline of the history-in-making

(Translated by Syed M. Aslam from Urdu poem of Mahmood Sham, a prominent poet, writer, author and editor of Pakistan’s most widely circulated vernacular Daily Jang)