Whitamn's America and Ghalib's Delhi

For Whitman,
America seemed interminable.
For me,
even Delhi is interminable.

When Whitman
sang songs of America,
what was it
but the blooming youth of a nation.

Here, in the ruins of Qutab
and in the imbecile Tughlaq's
incomplete stone palaces,
its the afternoon of time.

It strikes me,
as a poetic fact,
for Whitman and Ghalib lived
so many miles apart

oblivious of each other's
existence,
once muse burning with
a flame to lighten the world.

while the other's
dying,
burnt to ashes,
its phoenix alluding it.

I see translated America
and I see Delhi.
I read translated Ghalib
and I read Whitman.

Poetry,
poles apart.
One of winy grief
and the other of golden hopes.

Translations
conceal the congenital.
They are hiding something,
I can't put my finger on.