Beyond Land and Time

The Kingdom of the Earth

(Prithibilok)

Translated by Asif Chowdhury

Far and near only cities and cities, homes collapse;

The fall of villages resonates;

Mankind has spent one too many epochs in this earth,

yet their shadows on the wall

Death, destruction, and fear,

are as bewildering as ever.

Now there is nothing but nothingness in the bank of time.

Yet surrounding the ever-expanding desert

of the failed man’s sorrows and clumsy ambitions,

tender and refreshed by the waves of strange trees,

there is a land,

the earth, this love, wisdom, and the heart’s command.