Beyond Land and Time

Idle Moment

(Lôghu Muhurto)

Translated by Joe Winter

Now at day’s end three beggars—more or less unmarried—

are blissfully at ease.

They take a deep breath in grey air—their faces are cleansed, blessed,

street-side, in the grey breeze.

For the land they will go to now is called the ruddy river

where the laundryman and his ass come and discover

their faces in water, each riding each, magically set over.

Nevertheless before they set off these beggars three

are joined at three tea-mugs in a circle together;

the Lord High Executioner, the Grand Vizier and the King

(that’s who, in a kind of pact, they are to each other).

But a beggarwoman drawn to the lame men—these uncles, fathers-in-law –

or herself a new in-law, tea-mugs set out before—

gives the pairs of ears the sense they’re at one in a group of four.

Tipping some hydrant-pipe water into their tea

They set about to be more steady and serious

with their lives, sitting on the damp pavement;

and shaking their heads say sadly, ‘Without Jolly-Folly’s,

The stretch up from Tala Waterworks to Chetla Bazaar,

would it be such a smart-ass area?

No mother’s son or nephew’s aunt’ll give a beggar a paisa.’

With that, shaking their rough beards billy-goat fashion,

they glance across at the girl

and it comes upon them, the tea strengthening the scene –

they have summoned up a witch-spirit, they feel.

This girl was a duck once, it may be, now she’s ducky-duck-like.

Seeing that they’ve whipped out a glass with a finger-click:

‘No gold or silver here—but whose slaves are we?—free as you like.’

Listening to all this word-foam a gnat of the dark hours

leaps across their nose-tips, leaps and alights;

while as if sitting on a river-bank, in Bentinck Street

they reckon up the world’s wrongs, its rights;

they reckon up its rights and wrongs, killing the lice in their hair;

which people do the spending—where—

who gives—what is given—who gets what share—

how the wheel of justice is set in motion by a smidgen of wind—

or if someone dies and someone else gives him a bottle

of medicine, free—then who has the profit?—

over all of this the four have a mighty word-battle.

For the land they will go to now is called the soaring river

where a wretched bone-picker and his bone come and discover

their faces in water—till looking at faces is over.