Beyond Land and Time

The Traveller

(Jātri)

Translated by Chidananda Das Gupta

Aeons ago, it would seem,

In the limpid waters of some distant ocean

Life began

Behind it lay the hieroglyphic fog,

Bereft of birth and death, of identity.

Forgetting slowly the language of that fog,

Falling in love unknowingly with some undefined being—

And drawn to the light, the sky, and the water

A new meaning grew, on the earth cradle.

So entwining in his heart

The black and white of death and life

Man has come on his journey to earth.

Amidst the inky skeletal dust, the blood strewn all round

Picking my way along the signposts of shiftless longing

I came to make known the sign of my birth in dust—

To whom?

The earth? The sky? The sun that burns the sky?

The speck dust, the atom, the molecule, the shade, the rain. the droplet of water?

The city, the port, the state, the world of knowledge and ignorance?

The fog that hung over our birth

The fog that will remain entangled with our death

Bends now its darkness towards the ellipse of light;

The mind swims out in love to the blue expanse 

Urging us on the to the ageless dark ocean.

Yet every day

The sun brings with it

The day, the light, the way of life and of death

Whose meaning to eternal history

Remains unfathomed.

Towards this end man marches

Love and decay and pain marking his every step,

The river and the human heart, grey and forever flying,

Reach the end of night at dawn—the countless dawns of the eternal story—

New suns, new birds, new signs in towns and habitations

With new travellers merge the travellers to the land of life;

In their hearts is light and song and journey’s rhythm—

The journey without end, perhaps given to man, in eternity.