Beyond Land and Time

Garland of Shells

(Shônkhômālā)

Translated by Humayun Azad and Robert Calder

In the dark of evening, leaving the path in the forest,

I was followed...

                  whoever was she? She said, I want you,

I have sought your two eyes, blue like the fruit of the cane

among the stars, among the wings of the mist

                  in the reflections of fireflies

                  in the water of the river;

                  looked for you there,

stretching in the autumn darkness my tawny owl-wings

                  crossed the Dhanshiri.

In paddy-fields like steps of gold,

                  I have looked for you, an owl, in the heart, lonely.

I saw her body, like the colour of some bird in sorrow:

like that one which comes at twilight,

wet with darkness, to the branches of shirish—

on whose head the crescent moon shines,

            whose voice is heard by the blue, the horn-curved moon.

Her face has the whiteness of shells,

her hands the cold of the snows;

In her eyes burns the red pyre of hazel:

her head laid to the south

as if disastrously Shankhamala were in that fire.

In her eyes is darkness of thousands and thousands of years.

Her breasts are like sad conch-shells—wet with milk,

of Shankhinimala of time unknown.

This earth has her only once, then never again.