Silent is the night: silent like death.
There are no stars tonight, shining above.
There are no winds, howling in the streets.
Sealed by the deathly cold of the concrete,
The world sleeps away like the undying dead.
A lone figure haunts these graveyards,
Perched upon tombs, weeping for all and none.
In the deathly fog, two cold hands fumble,
Reaching forth in ungodly tremor, seeking.
And the eyes rove maddeningly in the dark:
What was here before, what is not here now?
“I breathed life into your worlds, did I not?
Ye, who are strewn here now, dead to the world?
I conjured up your lives, I brought you hither:
Ye arose from your stations into my eternity.
There, I kept ye, free from the world’s pain,
Free from age, free from time, bound to my heart.”
Ecstatic and wild, the poet breathed out the seasons:
The spring and the summer, the monsoon and the autumn.
Like a carefree god, he created worlds upon worlds.
The poet made the body, and the kiss, and the embrace.
His love became the blazing sun, his kindness, the moon.
The days and the weeks, and the months and the years,
All the ages of man came to halt in the moment of the kiss.
The softness of the blossoms, the music of the winds,
The tenderness of the snow, and all the warmth of the sun,
Like rain into the earth, found their refuge in the embrace.
This poet, cruel and unthinking, created ye recklessly,
Unleashing the contagion of love upon an indifferent world.
Ye muses! Ye roamed the earth and the heavens like gods!
What ungodly winter has gripped ye, now lying like the dead?
Why has the life gone out of you now?
Or was it that you never truly lived?
Have the muses now finally abandoned the poet?
Has his fire run out? Or has he breathed his last?
He dreamed of blossoms growing out of the deserts,
Pouring himself out like water, into his barren muse.
This poet, naive and unthinking, saw the mirages,
And into the quicksand of his words, he disappeared:
A world was given away, a world was wasted away.
Cruel are you, poet, making us into playthings!
You have only desired us, for you enjoy the desiring alone.
You have not kept us, for once attained, we ignite you not.
You cruel hunter, you have set your traps all around,
Piercing us with your dart, and again setting us free:
You have given us flight, but only to enjoy your prey.
Your love is poison, and we have drunk it like nectar:
You made us immortal― gods are we now, ruling over the dead.
Are ye not mine? Are ye not mine?
The fire has gone out of my world!
Among the rubble of my once-great empires,
Your deathly silence haunts like the graveyard.
Are you here now? Were you there before?
In your silence, ye muses, nothing echoes back.
Upon a cold winter night, dissolved in darkness,
This fool dreams of love, seated upon a marble tomb.
Silent is the night: its stillness fatal.
Death has now overcome the world of the poet.
The moon has abandoned the desolate night,
And the dawn has forsaken the eastern sky.
No kisses remain, all embrace turned to stone,
A lone figure walks away― into the silence.
For S. N.―
Bardhaman, Pauṣa Kṛṣṇā Dvādaśī.
The 2nd of January in 2019 CE.