Beyond Land and Time

1946-47

(1946-47)

Translated by Joe Winter

There’s hazy rushing-about of people everywhere in daylight:

roads, tracks, tramlines, pavements;

now someone else’s house is up for auction—for a price

cheaper than water, I’d say.

Everyone’s pulling a fast one to get to heaven

in front of everyone else, as they can.

Many will be running till they gasp, but

of the house and goods for auction—or indeed of those articles

not up for auction

one or two will take their pick, swindling their way to the front.

In this world interest mounts up: but not for all.

Deeds to an indescribable fortune are in the hands of one or two.

All the world’s high-ups come and stake their claim

to everything, stake their claim to women.

All the rest in the dark like the multitudinous leaves of autumn

take off flying somewhere to river-water

or to the ground—to be absorbed in the recurring seed-current

of Earth. In the world very many births go to waste, it’s true;

but returning in the smell of the sun, in flowers’ nectar, dust, grass, familiar water,

to some small degree they will inherit the mother-right of light:

with this at heart they are lost in darkness.

They are subsumed and with it—dead.

The dead don’t come back to this world.

The dead are nowhere, agreed?

Except in the hearts of some peaceful people strolling the paths of Aghran

The dead are nowhere, I think;

and so if one may enjoy in a certain tranquility before death

light, food, sky and woman, it is good.

In many thousand Bengali villages, silent, dark, listless, the lamp

of hope’s out.

After sunset, look, a lovely-tressed darkness

comes to up her hair—but with whose hands?

Her hair still loose she keeps looking—but for whom?

There are no hands—on one’s around; but one, one of the many thousand

village nights of Bengal—like puja floor-decorations, like painted terracotta plates—

had almost become a woman, long-eyed, soft-smiling – but all’s erased.

Here only the other day the harvest festival was in the air:

for the new rice’s juice . . . when in this place eldest and next eldest,

in that place low-caste wives blew the conch . . .

crow-hordes came flying in the sun for the nectar;

now of all those crows not a whisper is heard;

and skull and skeleton of Man are beyond the count of Man;

in Time’s hand it is endless.

There in the night of the moon peasants would dance in the meadow

after a good drink of the paddy’s strange juice—shortly before

the marriage of Majhi Bagdi’s daughter Ishwari

and shortly after—and before the birth of her child.

All these children today are crushed nearly to death

in the exhausted, crowded community

of this age’s stupid misrule: and of all these village children

the great-grandfathers laughed and played and loved—and went

to sleep in the dark

after flinging out the zamindars’ Permanent Settlement to the top

of the charka-tree.

Not that they had such a fine time of it; but still,

compared with the blind and ragged village creatures of today

in their famine and riot and unhappiness and illiteracy,

they were of a distinct and quite separate world.

Is everything a blur today? It’s hard now to make out the issues;

letting everyone into half-truths in darkness

is the practice today; then alone in that darkness

to make a stab at the rest of the truth

is the way of it; everyone’s peering sideways at everyone else.

Creation’s inner make-up looks like—hate.

Creation’s inner make-up: through our true beliefs

drag shadows of our suspicious, bringing pain.

In Nature we have seen a waterfall

dance down hills and rocks and looked in our hearts

and seen its first waves reddened by the blood off slaughtered animals;

still today the tiger is on the heels of the deer;

I have slaughtered man—my body is lapped in his blood;

in the course of the world this murdered brother’s

brother am I; though he saw me as the younger one

his heart hardened, he killed me, and I lie sleeping

having killed that ignorant one who was as an elder brother

at the bloody river’s torrent—so burying their face

in his narrow chest the loving pilgrims of life

appear to believe they will confer light on all

by stepping forward—but there is no light: they sleep.

They sleep.

If I call then from the wave-roaring river of blood

he will approach and say ‘I am Yasin

Hanif Mohammad Maqbool Karim Aziz—

and you?’ So putting his palm on my chest and raising his eyes

from his dead face he will ask—again the blood-river

will swell in reply, ‘Gagan, Bipin, Shashi, of Pathuriaghata,

of Maniktala, Shyambazar, Galif Street, Entally—‘

who knows of where; all these men

come from life’s lowest classes; with torn shoes on their feet

they go to the market to buy worm-eaten goods;

in Creation’s never-ending pull and drive

all these life-particles awoke—beneath the rays of an afternoon sun

in the bright eyes of a noble soul

these neglected eyes of a noble soul

these neglected lives of a luminous world

like atoms, seem suddenly beautiful.

In the sound that arises as particles collide

with the thrilled bodies of particles in a cascade of sunlight

in the music of his unparalleled voice

Time speaks; but to whom? Yasin Maqbool Shashi

suddenly approach but before they say anything

it is as if from the deep heart of fragmented eternity

a host of things are said; yet

eternity is indivisible; and so those dreams works speeches

into undivided eternity have vanished;

no one’s there, nothing’s there—the sun is extinct.

In this age there’s a deal less light all around.

We have wrung out the value of t his long-lived world,

of its words work pain errors vows and stories

made of the fineness of thought, and so we have stored up

sentences words language and an inimitable style of speech.

Yet if people’s language does not take light from the world of feelings

it is mere verbs, adjectives, a haphazard homeless skeleton of words

that stays well away from the verge of awareness.

Even though we have inherited the gifts of a store of learning,

in this our century

science is a throng of gathered facts—all it does is grow;

and since there’s no place for the soul in this world

today there is no significant knowledge; and without knowledge,

            no love.

In this age there’s no glimmer of light—of light’s loveliness

before the eyes of a traveler; nor does a darkness issue forth

of the nature of night as a mother: that washes clear all the errors

of man’s confused body—where man’s confused soul

lying apart from crowds in a deeply-secluded place

is questioned no more—where to once-asked questions of the past answers are needed no more—there is only a soundless deathless

surrounding darkness, all faults weariness fear error sins are cleansed of passion—slowly this life is freed from sorrow,

a tender coolness is born in the heart; as if on the shore of a

            charted sea

welcome notes of the wind carry near

mingled in devdaru branches—with the continual harmony

of that wind in the bloody soul of man his life is pure.

In this world is there no such generous embracing darkness

left today? No refreshing breeze, no true depth, no sacredness?

Still man can turn from his blind misfortune to soothing darkness,

and back from darkness to his new cities villages festivals

even now buoyant on his way—and in his heart

transcending the source of error and sin there remains

an inviolate patch of awareness, it seems to me.