Beyond Land and Time

A Song to Kill the Darkness

(Timirhônôner Gān)

Translated by Swapan Majumdar

In some lake

In the waves of a river somewhere

In the waters of a certain ocean—

Mingling a moment of two with each other, like water

On that one morning our life’s tumults

Wanted, perhaps, to learn about life

From the century’s sun.

With the gaze of a different sky

We have laughed,

We have played;

Judging no disgrace in a memorable inheritance,

One day we have loved.

All those customs are like the eyes of the dead today—

Lightless, sightless, gazing at the starlight,

Starlight on autumn’s horizon.

Drawing out that strain, we still play today.

There is no sunlight, yet

When the sunlight seems pleasing, we smile.

Despondent by nature, common gentlefolk

Still see shadows blacker than their gloom,

Fed by the gruel-kitchen,

Outleap the middle-class registers of pain and despair

To climb up from the sewer to the overbridge,

Then down to the sewer to the overbridge,

Then down to the sewer again.

Moving from pavement to a farther, unresponsive pavement,

They know how to sleep or to die in the light of the stars.

All these people are on this track;

Those others on that one—yet

In the middle-class world

We feel no pain, being

On the path of endless pain.

Nothing is there; still we play, drawing out that strain.

Still we smile, when the sunlight seems steeped in wisdom.

Thinking of it as a woman, dead or alive,

In the darkness we love the musk of the megalopolis.

Even though advanced to kill the darkness,

Are we darkness-indulgent?

We want to be darkness-destroyers.

We are darkness-destroyers.