Dying Benediction

DYING BENDICTION

Enough if a sweet song is sung when I die,
No drugs, no medicines need be used at any rate;
None should lament, none should weep, sob or sigh,
For sorrowing over death I ever hate.

Observe not Pollusion, from incantations be aloof,
Suffice it’s if my body is bathed and wiped clean;
A memorial day without a trace of grief
You may arrange for this worthy poet late or soon.

No propitiation’s and rites be done for me,
Nor monthly nor annual ceremonies be performed,
But gifts to boys and girls you may give in my name
On any day so fixed and by you confirmed.

What is past birth and what is rebirth is not known,
Nothing but liquid-water is man on earth:
Iceberg is water, its vapour not, we own:
What does it matter if both are one in birth?

My wife shouldn’t die with her vermilion mark wiped
No widowing her in the guise of tenth day ritual;
If she can bear the pangs of my death, it’s enough:
No more the obsequies, no more that’s irrational.

I’m not an atheist, I’m not a faithless man,
I have longing for life, for all that’s good,
Not in religion, not in form, neither, nor in clan,
But in humanism I have great belief, if understood.

For old and new combined I have built in my heart
A temple to my taste but with due restraint;
By living as a rationalistic bridge of art
I can serve the literary world much like a saint.

The world as a whole would come to an end one day,
No eternal rest in the cosmos, I can say on oath:
The death of man a strange episode, you say?
Why senseless anguish? The end of all pains, in truth,
Is indeed a bliss and death a blissful boon I say.