Time

Dr. BEZAWADA GOPALA REDDY
(Rendered from the Telugu by D. Anjaneyulu)

It dawned as before
To the music of chirping birds,
With the fragrance-fed breezes;
With graces of
Rosy-fingered morn.

It dawned yesterday
And the day before
As it did
A hundred years,
A thousand years before.

Where is Time’s beginning?
How many millions of times
Had it dawned,
Enriched by the glories
Of the seasons six,
Their lights and shades,
Snows and shreds of clouds
Smiling in the cradle of
Cooling breeze.
But no two days are alike
In their happenings,
Tales and turmoils,
Or loves and sorrows.

Men being born from aeons past
Are different one from another
In shape and form
In voice and ways of life;
Baffling in diversity.
Likewise in the millennia of days
No day is like another
Endless are the days
But ever new;

So are lives and deaths
Joys and sorrows
Loves and hates
Cries of war and
Songs of Peace
They are different
They are all different.

Today is tomorrow’s yesterday
The day before for the day after
A hundred years hence
It is a hundred years past,
This century is the
Last century for the next;
The present, riding the
Chariot of Time
Vanishes every second into the
Dark caverns of the Past.
Neither can we see yesterday
Nor can we lift her veil of darkness;
Her unimaginable countenance
That dazzles today.
Burning to ashes in the Funeral flame of darkness,
Merges into the yester-year
Beyond recall
Who can count
How many yesterdays
Have gone into the
Dark maw of Time!
Who knows
How many todays
Have dissolved as tiny ripples
In the sea of Time?
How many flowers
Have faded in spring!
How many drops
Have fallen in the rainy seasons!

Who is drawing today
With a power unrivalled
A pull irresistible?
What is that magnetic force?
To which unknown shore
To which nameless port
Are all the yesterdays
Pushing the vessel of today
Dashing against
Some dark rocks
And breaking asunder
Drops into the mid sea.

Rather like the Sultan
In the Arabian Nights Tales
Who did away in the morning
With the Damsel with whom he spent the night before
Who is this Father Time
Who kills today after having done with it?
Why so lustful
Why so blood-thirsty!

Today is a bubble
Beautiful and Multicoloured
Floating down on the River of time
Carrying the ashes of Death
A single Day covers ages
Childhood, youth and old age,
Light and Dark
Many doings and undoings,
Million Deaths
And Million Births.

Today is a charming danseuse
Dancing gracefully,
Expressing all emotions,
Reminding one of the burning Sun in her anger
Recalling the moon in her pleasure
In her loveplay she scatters
The jasmine stars in her hair
At times with fragrant zephyrs,
Dark rain clouds,
And Bright Rainbows

At other times with the sound of gales, hot winds
Thunders, waterfalls
And the roar of the sea.
Sends up the Power to dizzy heights,
Kicks up into the Dust.
Performs the Dance of Death
Sings loveliest of songs,
Dancing peacocks, singing Koels,
Preening swans are all
In her pleasure garden
What has she not
What can she not?

The serpent of Time,
Fed on the skeletons of yesterday
Swallows Today
Grinding it with its fearsome fangs
Sucking it up into its capacious maw,
Which contains dark impregnable mountains
How many more millions of todays
To quench its limitless Hunger?
How many more scientific Advances
And social Revolutions
And how many heights to scale
Before man could attain
The state of eternal bliss?

The Muse of History awake
Maybe five millennia ago,
The Vedas were just then born
How much has Humanity progressed
During this period
In Literature and Philosophy
Music and the Arts!
The age of Science is
Not even five centuries old;–  ­
But what a record of Achievements–
­Steam engine and Electricity
Radios, X-Rays, Aeroplanes;
Advances Revolutionising
In Medicine and Surgery
Human Races expanding
Human Rights stabilising
Liberty of Individuals and Nations
Universal Adult suffrage
Rise of the working class
New seeds in Agriculture
All these in recent years?

Thousands of laboratories striving
To uncover Nature’s mysteries.
Each century, craning its neck to have
A peep into Future’s lineaments,
Ensconsed on its predecessor’s shoulders.
Whither is humanity bound­–
To which soaring peaks at horizon’s ends,
To which unplumbed depths of the ocean of Knowledge?
A thousand years or two thousand from Now
The sun will rise as it does today
Only with the mind’s eye can he see
How man will then be,
His modes, his manners,
His ideas and endeavours
We must hitch our wagon
Only to the stars in the sky
Humanity’s hundred petals,
Must blossom in full;
Man should become divine,
Effacing the Demon in him;
And elevating the humane;
Heralding the Golden Age
Approaching the goal ultimate.