Time shoots forward like an arrow in flight,
Unable to stop, never looing back, burying the dead on all sides,
Not caring for the hordes of lazy laggards and sleepy souls
Unwilling to move forward, unable to remain in the race.
Apples ripe today, rot tomorrow and must be thrown away.
What is good now proves a shackle as we move on.
Nothing, no one can be brought back to life.
Every second brings a wholesale change.
Nothing will ever be the same!
Familiar faces, animals, fowls, fishes, winds, currents, boats and planes,
Trains, cars and trucks, water down the bridges have moved on.
The sun, the moon, the planets, galaxies and quasars on their tracks
Have changed their position, their mutual relation.
Museums, tombs, statues and historical monuments
Prolong the memory of the laughter, sad and happy tears,
Triumphs, struggles and dangers, hopes and fortunes of mankind,
Slowing down the impatient rush of time.
Time, the merciful destroyer, Time, the prophetic creator,
Is perhaps only an expert cinema operator!
The story unfolds, the past and the future dissolve,
Merge for a fleeting instant in the present
On the shifting screen on the backdrop of eternity!
The future rises from a pregnant void, half anticipated,
Dances in the limelight of the present stage,
Then vanishes in a nosedive forever in the unmanifest!
O Time Spirit, I shall not be fooled by your mystery play!
There is no coming, no going, no sunrise or sunset
Time has ceased to tick, nothing moves anymore.
The Power is still, immoblile felicity, the motionless Self
Kali is dreaming in ecstasy on the lap of Mahakala in trance
The near dissolves into the far and out of the distant mist
Comes rushing to meet the present, like a faint point of light
That grows at each moment into a marvelous colony of stars.
The rat running through a long twisted tunnel of crazy time,
Through a thousand subtle mutations emerges as the thinking man.
Man too is forever on the run, unable to rest, goaded by time.
Every step forward takes him to a destiny beyond the reach of his mind.
The transient clay image of man hides a blissful Godhead of immortal beauty
Who waits his hour like the magnificent butterfly in a miserable caterpillar.
The unending movement rests on the flame-steady Will of God.
*******
Niranjan Guha Roy