DEEP IN THE STILLNESS

by Amrits Bharati

Literal translator Lucy Rosenstein

He threw me away
like a clod of earth.
He didn't know
I was a thing with a soul.
He didn't know
I was alive.

He kept on throwing me
like a clod of earth
out of his way -
onto that neglected path
that happened to be mine.
And so I kept travelling
along my own way.
Each time some fragment broke off -
some infatuation, some addiction to happiness,
some earthly hope,
some dream squandered on man.
Each time some fragment of my being
would break off.
And now it was my turn.
The world was already left behind -
like a desert in a sandstorm,
like an ocean in a hurricane,
like a desolate city.
Man, step by step descending,
was already left behind.
And now it was my turn.
Standing on the last patch of earth
I gathered myself into a whole thing
and hurled myself into the stillness.
This was my silence -
pervasive and expansive.
Now the world was either a dream
or a sea-flower
imagined at the end of the ocean.
Deep in the stillness.
Only the sound of my footsteps.