ساقی نامہ
حقیقت پہ ہے جامۂ حرف تنگحقیقت ہے آئینہ، گفتار زنگ
English translation
Words are but a strait-jacket for reality: Reality is a mirror, and speech the coating that makes it opaque.
Translated by M. Hadi Husain
About this couplet
This is couplet 97 of 99 in “ساقی نامہ” (The Cupbearer's Epistle) in the section Poems, from Allama Muhammad Iqbal's Urdu book Bal-e-Jibril (بالِ جبریل), published in 1935.
Read it in the poem۹۷ / ۹۹