The poetry of a fallen Delhi

Khwaja Altaf Husain "Hali" penned this poem after the 1857 Mutiny. The translation is taken from Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) xviii. There is a specific genre for poetry in Farsi and Urdu which describes the sacking of a city called the "shehrashob":

Hearken to me, do not go into the ruins of Delhi.
At every step, priceless pearls lie buried beneath the dust,
No place in the world is so rich with hidden treasure.
Even the traces of what reminded us of the city’s destruction are gone,
Dear Heaven, can there be greater oblivion than that?
Those are gone have forgotten us. We too have ceased to think of them.
Times have changed as they can never change again.
Can you point to any family that which does not bear scars?
Dear heave, that made us weep, cease, I beseech you,
But do not let strangers mock us.
If they were to know our plight, not only friends
But the whole world would pity us.
O cup-bearer, who passes the last round of wine.
Do not fill it to the brim, and let no thirst be fully quenched.
For now their long spell of good fortune lies asleep.
Do not awaken them, O wheel of time, they are in deep slumber.
O mirth and joy, hasten hence, Delhi is no place for you any more,
Yes, once Delhi was the center of art and science
But the art of poetry is dead, never to be born again.
Do not grieve for the glories of the past.
‘Ghalib,’ ‘Shefta,’ ‘Nayyar,’ ‘Azurda’ and ‘Zauq’ will never come again.
After ‘Momin,’ ‘Alavi’ and ‘Sehba,’ who is left to speak of that art of poetry.