Beyond Land and Time

Blue Skies

(Nilimā)

Translated by Clinton B. Seely

Sunshine-glistening

Dawn sky, blue of midnight,

You show yourself time and again in endless splendour

Above this helpless city’s prison walls,

Here thick coils of smoke overflow,

Harsh cooking fires ever glow here,

Blood-red pebbles emerged with hot desert breath,

Mirage-covered.

Hearts of countless travellers

Forever search desperately, not finding their way;

Their feet shackled by authority’s firm chains.

O blue skies unblinking, you, O magician, have cracked

With your magic wand the very foundations of this prison of

Thousand injunctions!

Amidst humanity’s uproar I sit in solitude and wonder

From what far mysterious place you wove your enchanted net

Then came alone to reality’s bloody shores,

Spreading your blue wrapper over crystal lights,

A mute dream-peacock’s wing!

Wiped from my eyes are the bloodstains

of hunter-pierced earth,

Up flare fair lamp flames through limitless skies!

Sun-broiled beaches pallid with earth’s tears,

Tattered clothes, shaven-headed mendicants,

pitiless this highway,

This prison for the millions about to die,

This dust—vast darkness encased in smoke

Sinks within blue skies—into dream-widened,

overwhelmed eyes,

Into conch-white clouds in sparkling skies on a starshine night,

Split is the withered cocoon of insectlike earth

By your hesitant touch, O sleepless, far, fanciful realm!