Kalpurusha

Kalpurusha, what are you doing here near the hamlet rivulet Making the bodies rolled out one by one, In age after age Just outside the hamlet homes, A cluster of mud-built houses with straw-thatched roofs? Marking ashti-kalshas hanging by the peepul tree By the banks of the river, The burning ghats solitary and littered with Bamboo cots, broken and half-burnt, Earthen bowls half-broken and pitchers tumbled down. Just by the river banks, loitering on the ghats, sometimes by the peepul tree Or on the rocks, see I, You sitting under the star-lit skies Marking the funerals, the last rites, But how long, how long will you go on hearing? I know it you are Time, Time Indelible and Indestructible, The Iron Man, But here lie I a mortal man plodding my own way, You are Time, Time, Endless Time, The Man of Time, Tolling the mundane bell. But may I ask you, how, how long will you go on blanketing the dead, O, how long, how long, Will you go on seeing the dead bodies rolled off By being rocky and stony-hearted, Stubborn and obdurate? O, how long, how long will you go on hearing the heart-renting Hari bols, How, how long will you go on seeing the dead Being brought out of the homes and placed on pyres After being bathed into the small river waters! Do their weepings and wails tear you not apart, the hard heart of yours, Do they not And you go hearing those wails of man, Hardening the heart, Without any tears in the eyes As this you have watching for so long? Kalpurusha, one day I too shall return back to, but when will you? I too shall have to return back, but when will you finally?