Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8

I KNOW not

Where had I wandered about and then reached afar this dreamland:

I found myself standing on the brink of a fluent river.

Above, the vast empty pale azure

Firm and high up. Here upon our globe

Twin comrades Earth and Heaven ever

Play their love-game intimate together.

Green earth only looks upward

Towards her lover's face, shivers in intense delight

In the thousand tremblings of the leaves, among the cool grasses.

The blue sky holds in embrace

The whole body of his Beloved enveloping it with delight,

Lifts up his high head, spreads aloft his laughter of love.

This is the play here. In our ealm here

Exists no cruel separation. But there

Earth is dying as though in grief, in fear,

Left alone in an empty universe. Swallowed in that Infinite,

Frightened by the heights, surrounded by nightmare,

Lies the little human life. Limitless expanse of land

Silent vast empty pale grey

Extends the unbroken wideness of the lifelessness

Of the great Void. No tree is there,

No grass, no stone, nor any human habitation

Could one see. The eyes move ever forward, move ever,

No end is there; yet though tired

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I am unable to return! A cruel landscape in its cruel pull

Carries away a prisoner as though to an enemy-land

Afar, afar into a bourneless world

In the stilled infinity.

I forced my eyes to return

Towards the other shore. It is hard stone

A fierce strength has moulded together, a long labour,

As though the artifact of a titan. During the wild rains

On the banks abroad spreading its body allover the skies

In rude delight the titan has laboured,

Happy at Nature's cruel game.

Fancy dawned in him to make it still more cruel.

Line after line it has carved smilingly on the stone.

Like a huge skeleton lies the wet shore of the river,

The mere bones as it were, bereft of flesh, of dead earth:

It lies immemorially with no solace of last rites done for

At that solitary end of things on that river-verge. I

No bend is in view, no grass nor flower. Erect, proud,

Firm, solid, despising, all softness

Goes down into the water the lifeless heartless stone.

Beyond afar, the desert land has moved lazily

To unite with the stone. No softness,

No love is there in the union, it is matter's love,

Stone's kiss.

I looked towards the stream.

It flows in silent speed - the stream of dreamland;

Asleep, mighty, calm, as though the violent life-force

Is imprisoned in Nature's arms on the crest of the Himalayas

Away lies the exit, the way out. Where the meadow

Meets the stone, a narrow space, as though

The throat of hungry death, there

In the land's perilous life-line, Death himself

Lay asleep like a python with his stone-figure

Possessing the universe. With slow wide-moving speed

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In its winding, the miraculous vedic steed Dadhikra,

God incarnate as life-force, bridled in his breast and face,

Lifting his proud neck rushes on taking man

On heaven's path to the world of Truth. But on that way

Is this the cataract of Life's river flowing down?

Is this the true consummation?

It hurtles down like a sinner in an unmeasurable speed

Towards a crueller country. The wailing

Of the river adown comes into my ears as though from a

thousand sufferers!

I looked about, my mind full of sadness,

And thought, "Oh, the dead land! the still world!

In the noise what a silence, in the speed what an immobility!

Will ever man come to live in this inert country?

Pour his own life-force and make it living?

Is there no purusa for this prakriti?"

Rejected, as if through fear, thought returns

Into her own dwelling. Motionless is the earth-life as ever.

All on a sudden I woke up and looked within myself.

With a startle I saw the inert realm alive,

Alive the waters, alive the cruel

Endless wasteland, even the sky up above

Conscious, alive the stretched neck of death, ­

The stone-figure has assumed the shape of a sleeping python.

And the sound of the waterfalls carries afar

The mourning of a living soul.

I understood why it is there Erect and proud the stone with no softness

No pity no happiness in it. I understood the hope

The river nourishes in its bosom, flowing towards its vast end

Beyond sight, as if the mighty life-force is in trance

Filled with its own force of speed. And I knew here

None speaks of any other person, they know not each other

They want not each other. Each is engrossed in trifles,

Each is bound to himself, muses all alone,

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Each is confined to his own act and own mood.

But when they stumble upon each other, they tremble within,

The body, stunned and bound, thinks, "Lo, this is another I

That falls upon my body, this touch is full of joy!"

That is the end of it. There does not bloom the secret

Yearning

Neither in speech nor in movement nor in thought.

In my hopelessness

I see as though the whole world is a prison.

All on a sudden a sweet voice sounded within me:

"Look back, understand the hope of Prakriti,

Understand the dead prison-house is a mother's heart,

The hidden significance understand that is in this game."

I lifted my burning eyes, I saw afar

In the wasteland human figures. A boy and a girl

Embracing each other in mad delight in this expanse of

matter,

In this inert dreamland two living beings are there free

With no fetters, rapt in trance in each other's delight.

They disappeared from the sight. And that living matter

With no hope in it, is bound in its own mood as always.

But my mind freed out of the matter's touch,

I recognised the intent of the veiled conscious Being,

I captured in my spirit Nature's hidden desire.

My eyes capturing the whole landscape, consoled I returned

To earthly sphere.

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