| sojoketa |
Posted
on 16-Jul-03 09:30 AM
Translated by David Rubin
Mahakabi L.P Devkota
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Within this blissful heaven the earth
I took my pleasure, creating fantasies.
Like a desert was what it all became.
As though the night has fallen
I just now barely understand
Suddenly the world is like a night.
So long as I was living I could not grasp it.
At the end I learned Shri Krishna was the only one,
but I had no knowledge, no wisdom, and no devotion.
Hot as an atom in a vast desert
I burn, dying without hope, dumb.
I am empty as a dried-out tree,
heating in the funeral fire I threw off
my sacraments like water.
like emptiness into emptiness.
In this heaven I was born and thrived;
at the end, uselessly,
I turn to ash and disappear.
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I see sounds,
I hear sights,
I taste smells,
I touch not heaven but things from the underworld,
things people do not believe exist,
whose shapes the world does not suspect.
Stones I see as flowers
lying water-smoothed by the water's edge,
rocks of tender forms
in the moonlight
when the heavenly sorceress smiles at me,
putting out leaves, softening, glistening,
throbbing, they rise up like mute maniacs,
like flowers, a kind of moon-bird's flowers.
I talk to them the way they talk to me,
a language, friend,
that can't be written or printed or spoken,
can't be understood, can't be heard.
Their language comes in ripples to the moonlit Ganges banks,
ripple by ripple-
oh yes, friend! I'm crazy-
that's just the way I am.
Enjoy!!!!
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