Beyond Land and Time

After the Death of Men

(Mānushєr Mrittyu Hôlє)

Translated by Shirshendu Chakrabarti

After the death of men, man still abides.

Rising from the past he comes to men of our time:

First, to take the measurement of consciousness.

The throng of lives that had gathered before today

Is quite dead;

Each and every man with his very own distinct being

Has vanished into darkness;

Yet, permeating the light of our time

When they speak of love or knowledge

In the accents of m en of our time—

We are at once reminded of the interminable journey

Of Dipankar Srijnana;

Striding on—and on—

He had once believed that he sought for the Buddha,

For the knowledge that resided in dusty scrolls.

Climbing once the city’s winding stair,

Maturing in wisdom, why did he yet desire Ambapali

In the ardour of passion?

Desired—

And found Srimati in the quivering palace:

Those stairs wind up, nearly touching the blue;

The stairs bathed in sunlight;

On the way up the stairs the coming and going

Of another air and light, which when discerned and fixed upon,

Signals what uncommon voyage of love? Yet—in this final unbroken passage

He has seen some woman of noble soul with her child;

Both are dead.

Or perhaps there is no one?

There is no one there.

Only death now, in the scum of female gutters,

Among countless children on pavements,

And in the queued-up impotence of their begetters.

If all yearning, reaching out everywhere like abundant sunlight,

Must return to the starting point after wandering in a maze, what then did Srijnana seek?

If the sun only rings forth days,

Night only the stars

If men only bring forth social systems,

Society only confused revolutions,

And revolution only cold-blooded euphoria,

In that case did Srijnana seek anything at all?

The city’s stairs nearly touch the blue;

Yet the city is dead.

In another vista, strange and secluded, on those stairs

A woman of noble soul,

And her child;

Yet there is no one.

Having lived through Indian Time—the earth’s life-span ,

I’ve reached in life the margin of the Bengal Era;

Resuming here, in the year thirteen hundred and fifty,

And extending indefinitely, my heart, even mine

Muses on all these things,

Once more living it all, and pays homage

To the source of Creation and men issuing forth.

Because the latent witchery of Creation isn’t enough

To lull a child;

Men also wish to sort out everything by musing on them

before sleep.

They perform their tasks in the knowledge that

Musing on things can shrivel up the heart.

Even now, every day, time delivers up to men

Instead of limpid water

The ever-endangered blood of sister and brother;

Instead of harvest in his granaries

Corpse on corpse piled high by men,

Man no more, in the darkness of doom;

Yet because all these things lie awake

Like a malaise in the human mind,

Although the century’s life-span—half of it,

rather—is spent,

Men analyze this century with a cold detachment,

Thus keeping it illumined with hope; barring this,

There is nowhere any other kind of love.

After the death of men, man abides yet;

Rising from the past he comes to men of our time

As though to chart out surer directions,

To ascertain the progress of human labour

Governed by measured consciousness.