Beyond Land and Time

Grass

(Ghāsh)

Translated by Buddhadeva Bose

The world this morning is filled with soft green grass, gentle like green lemon-leaves,

Like an unripe orange it is—this green grass—as fragrant—with the deer ripping it off with teeth.

How I wish I too could drink the fragrance of this grass, like some greenish wine, beaker after beaker,

Could squeeze the flesh of this grass, rub my eyes against its eyes and my feathers against its plumage,

Could descend from the savoury darkness of some warm

grassmother’s flesh and be born as grass within the grass.