In deep darkness
I awoke once more
Distracted by the splash and fret of the river flowing by
I saw the pale moon wont to gleam on Vaitarani
Had caught Kirtinasha in its still noose of shade.
I had slept by Dhansiri river on a cold December night.
And had never thought of waking again.
O Moon, dimmed to a faint blue disc,
Day’s light you are not, you are not enterprise,
ambition, or dream;
The quiet and peace of death,
Its sleep- so dear to our heart
Is like a holy tryst
Which you moon have no means to spoil.
Do you not know, O Moon,
Do you not know, O Night,
I have gone to bed with Darkness,
And slept with her
For long, silent ages;
And then all of a sudden on a morning
I have found myself awake in the horrid crack
of this earth’s light-
So loud, so foolish!
The sun from a red sky, in a dry level tone,
has called on me as a soldier
To range against foes I have nerver known.
The vast belt of the sun-bedevilled earth
Has shricked and squcaled like millions of pigs in merriment.
Ah. Mirth!….a penumbra in my sould radiating
darkness-darkness ever more.
O man, O woman,
I have nerver known your level;
Nor am I a wonderer from another another star.
Only this I have known that wherever there is
Movement, desire, work and thought
There are darkness of friends, families, nations, the
Whole range of day-time madnesses.
I am too full of sleep of enveloping nescience;
Why should you keep me awake?
O Time, O Sun, O Kokol of January night. O Memory,
O Winter wind.
Why stir to announce me to the day?
Never more shall I waken
By the river’s ruthless gurgling.
I shall not see how the dim, assorted moon
Divides her flickering between the River of Death
And the River of Mutability.
By the water of Dhansiri
I shall go to bed with Darkness that never ends.
The sleep that never abates.