Beyond Land and Time

The Primeval gods

(Ādim Debotārā)

Translated by Jyotirmoy Datta 

The elements. Wind, water and fire. In their snaky whim

These primeval gods did give you shape.

What a fearfully lonely form they gave you,

And bug-like lechery in men whom you must know.

Wind, water, fire. These primeval gods in there crooked mood

Gave me this urge to write with words:

As if I too were wind and water and fire,

And you too my creation.

Not blood nor flesh nor lust

Is the beauty of your face,

Bat an island of deodars at midnight;

A far-away island blue and bare of man.

Yet fondled by flabby hands,

You are disappearing into the dusty earth;

And I am getting lost in the dimness

Made by stars in a far-away island.

Wind, water, fire: these ironical gods broadcast

Seeds of beauty all over the earth,

And seeds of dreams.

Now I wonder: where are you tonight?

Why does beauty—that beauty of earthly women—

Never know the island of star-shadowed deodar?

Being fondled by flabby hands being handled-handled-handled—

Fondled—handled—

O water, wind and fire! the crude gods burst into laughter:

‘Being handled-fondled-handled—does it turn into

the flesh of swine?’

I too start laughing like mad.

And laughter all around

Puffs and darkness up like the waves of a sea

Bloated with the carcass of a huge and putrid whale.

All your loveliness, my earth, stinks like a whale’s carcass:

And wherever, tossed on those meteor–waves, I go,

It’s strange but I seem at home, so much at home!