How beautiful is this land!
Beautiful and long-suffering.
A shawl of buckwheat green
Flutters in the wake
Of this train speeding
Through the East.

As far as the eye can see,
Green fields and granaries.
This land is a peasant woman
Coming home from the fields
With a bundle on her head.

Home?
Where angry vultures wheel
Over the rooftops and threaten to lunge,
Any minute, in any direction

The grass is wet with dew,
Unless my tear-glazed eyes
See only tears.

Brick and stone
Reduced to rubble.
Mosque and temple
Still locked
In the same old squabble.
Every brow
Disfigured by a frown.

A son of this land,
Laid long ago to rest,
Wakens now
To bring you peace.

Listen to Kabir,
Who pleads with you:
Wars of hatred
Do no honour to God.
Both Ram and Rahim
Will shun a loveless land.

Near a bamboo grove
Across the unruffled River Sarju
By a lotus pond thick with bloom
Stands a Buddha tablet
A message from the wise.

'When two are locked in conflict
And ready to lose their lives,
Neither can win in the end,
Unless both do—and equally.

A battle lost by either
Will be fought and refought
Until both are destroyed
And both are equal losers.'

Such are the paradigms of war,
Such the insight of the Buddha.
Why are we, his heirs, so blind?

The Pandit and the Mullah
Are flattered and hung with garlands
And feasted and housed like lords,
While you dear people of the land
Are drowned every time
In the bloodbaths they inspire.

Translated by Patricia L. Sharpe