Infinite Beyond

A beggar was born in this country of ours,
among breathless lines of cedar trees;
he leapt across the fences in rags and hunger,
crying out—let the life of the beggar triumph!
 
Feet covered in dry leaves carried him onward,
where the last gaze of the deer dissolved;
he walked in pain like a ragged phantom,
while the nostrils of starving tigers flared.
 
Once, beneath the dark sky’s spell,
earth’s scent intoxicated the heavens;
but days passed, nights passed—
now the predators march at any cost.
 
There are reasons for every hunt,
like the wings of greed’s unbridled birds;
in the barren plain no hunter waits,
only the beggar thirsts like a chataka for rain.
 
Jackal-eyes glimmer in the sal forests,
searching sustenance with stubborn ears;
at dawn the devil defeats him again,
he wails empty-handed on the way home.
 
Through barbed wire the beggars crawl,
flesh torn open upon the hunter’s fields;
Baudhayana, perched upon the branches,
declares—there is no place here for beggars.
 
By the river’s jagged edge he walks,
his chest trembling with hunger and thirst;
white afternoons are split with hyena’s dirge,
the beggar’s body shivers, homeless in the cold.
 
Upon vast islands of rising earth,
in the infinite beyond the beggar strides;
where hatred and hunger dwell together,
slaughter becomes eternal, life feeds upon death.
 
On bicycle handles, dangling upside-down,
chickens mutter sermons of scripture;
in alleys of the city, in slaughter-fields,
the hunt turns holy, Kurukshetra awakens.
 
Knowledge, amassed too high,
stretches the neck of the giraffe;
the path becomes harsher with each sight,
each hidden snare, each blind step—
and upon the infinite path, pain turns small,
swift comes justice, swift comes Yama.
 
Then a new dawn, a host of novices,
marching into life’s endless war;
slaughter-fields dressed in festival’s mask,
hunters and hunted bound together.
Let the beggar’s life triumph, though power prevails—
in the infinite beyond rings the hymn of life,
along with hypocrisy, delirium, and decay.