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Do Not Ask of Me My Love Summary

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Faiz Ahmed Faiz: A poet of defiance, transcending ideology - Frontline


Introduction

Faiz Ahamad Faiz was an intellectual, revolutionary and one of the most famous poets of Urdu language from Pakistan. His varied career won him a wide audience. He was the recipient of Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union in 1962. Faiz was inspired by South Asia’s Sufi traditions.

Synopsis
This poem is more about love which is not merely self-centred but universal. Humanity has been moved by this powerful inner feeling ever since time immemorial. Here, in the poem the poet tries to convey to his beloved his inability at the moment to return the same love he had in their youthful days. Then, her love was everything else. Her sorrows were more painful. As he has matured overtime, he now understands the world better. He feels that he has to respond to much bigger issues. There is more for him to love and there are more sorrows to understand. So, the poem concludes that a more mature attitude towards love gives one a better understanding of love and sorrows.

Theme
“Do not Ask of Me, My Love” is a poem of awakening of one’s perspective towards love.  It is a transformation from the self to the universal. The poem opens with the speaker’s appeal to his beloved about her disappointments over his love. He admits that there was a time when smitten by love his life was bright and blooming. His beloved’s beauty was everything and all else was vain.
He had thought that his beloved was his world but now understands that it was an illusion. He now knows that there are other sorrows in the world more than their love and other pleasures too. The poet refers to the past centuries that bear in them wounds of war, slavery and diseases but now lie covered in silk, satin and brocade shrouds. The speaker is moved by these miseries of history.
The poet confesses to her that he cannot express love to his beloved in the same measure that he used to do once, for there are other sorrows in the world than love and other pleasures too. So, the poet gives love a better interpretation and understands sorrows of the world much better.  
Conclusion
Thus, the poem concludes that one understands the world better for all its pleasures and pains when one matures with the passage of time.  

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