Pilgrimage For Our Time

PILGRIMAGE FOR OUR TIME


Adapted from Moti Lal Saqi's 'Nav Yaatra' by Sonam Kachru, August 2010.
As this translation has been accepted for publication by Words Without Borders, please do not cite or distribute without permission (kachru.sonam@gmail.com).





What is it you wish to leave
That has you leave
Not without leaving
Nothing behind?
Where is it you wish to be
That you take the zero road,
Think nothing of not leaving
Anyone not quiet behind
To lie as one lies
When one waits
For water,
Or is it an echo
The sound a cracked heel barely makes
On broken earth in an empty place?

You insist and take nothing
But a sometime familiar shadow
To carry the rest of your humpbacked life
On the empty road you will not leave, past
The look out that does not lie
Ahead, to a point at an indefinite close
Of a vanishing road
You possibly never meant to attempt,
Or reach. There is something,
Of a kind, in desolation’s witness—
An earthbound star,
The ruined sky.

There will be mountains.
There are always mountains.
There is hope always in the ascent
To breathe what breaths
They have forsaken before you now
On the heights, and when
You begin (and there is always time
to begin) your descent
There will be time
To think on distance,
Of cottages you can barely see,
Of beds and a pleasant enough country road
That can lead you past the open country fields
And country dogs
Only too eager to heel you through
Yet another rabid country scene.

Count yourself mad
In the unhinged city, for that is surely how
They will know you. Have a care when you pick
Your gentle way in the barbed meadows, again
In bloom; do not stop to listen
To the woodnotes by the glittering banks
Or follow their turning feet:
un-drowned gods mislead—but you know
Not to leave the empty road or rest your broken feet
Till you cross the desert—only, you know
You cannot cross the desert.
The desert is a waiting thing—and no road
Enters but leads into the waiting heart of it,
Where at last you must lie, emptied,
To listen to blistering wind
And the sun and empty sky, to wait
Overhearing the desert defeat you.

So they will find you, at the end, so very still—
Your breath all in you that moves as one
With sand—and so they shall account you
One, unbroken, among the visionary company—

In the end they will brick you in gold
Build about you a temple
To which others will find a well paved road
Now they call it peace
Where you are.

—Moti Lal Saqi



I apologize to readers for the loss of indentation in the blog-post. Readers more skilled in this art may forgive a novice.