What is lost in translation

My husband turned 80 years old a few days ago. I have told him that we will celebrate this big birthday for the entire month of October. October is a special month--there is a change in the light : the air seems molten gold that floods the world with some hidden meaning. I got him two CDs of the ghazals of Ghalib set to music. He likes to listen to them and sometimes he translates the Urdu phrases as they are sung and repeated. One he noticed today "One desire can eat up an entire life; desires come by the thousands/I 've received what I asked for many times; but it was not enough." I once would have thought that this insatiability is one of the proofs of human failure, now I see it more as a sign that yearning is our default position--our glory. There is something that we want that cannot be satisfied by mortal things. Shakespeare has one of his characters say "I have immortal longings." Augustine said that our souls are made for God and we will be "restless until we rest in Thee." Shelly, another poet, wrote about "the desire of the moth for the star, the day for the morrow" Is this restlessness the best thing about us--that we know that we were meant for something more than this mortal coil--that we are hungry to be reunited with the spirit that made us. Writing about the endless, hopeful human activity when there is no cause to hope, Ghalib writes "The efforts I make in my life resemble a bird in a cage/ Who can't stop gathering straws for her nest." One funny line from Ghalib " God sent an angel to drive Adam from Eden, we've all heard that story,/But when you threw me out I felt something much worse had happened.