Beyond Land and Time

Feeling

(Onubhôb)

Translated by Clinton B. Seely

Shall we not travel once again the amazing path?

Something well worth seeing yet remains somewhere.

From the Atreyi river to the vast ends of the Bay of Bengal

Dawn proceeding from west to

A Bengal of evening’s deltaic shores;

As salt seas well up in her −

All that the sun creates with sunshine −

And besides this, silence.

As a huge moon slowly comes to rest

Standing at the head of Bengal’s fields−

Besdies what nature gives of her own heart

There is no other moonlight anywhere.

Though not a widower, yet like his shadow

All these gains control here men’s hearts.

This land is sprinkled with light of the ocean, of the sun

All is bought and sold among men with copper.

The owl of a worthless storehouse unknowlingly flies

Into moonlight, like some luminescence.

Today it is not peace − it is not happiness,

It is not pain, either;

As we sought to abolosih discriminatory differences,

endless divisions arose,

Are being exhausted − in this sort of classless, self-less feeling.