Where was Man
When God brought out the Suns from the womb of Nothingness,
Launched the illumined galaxies in the timeless currents of space
And laid out the flight-path of the cosmic destiny?

Where was Man
When the mountains were fashioned, the volcanoes quenched,
The oceans filled with water and hope
To form the nursery of living wonder?

Where was Man
When God toyed with the idea of forms
And gave to every shape and mould a span of life and a joy
And through infinite patience arrived at Homo-sapiens?

As a token of gratitude to the long labour of the Divine
Man disowns his Sculptor and calls Him an impostor.
A mere flicker in time, dead before he is born,
He feels he is the jewel – fulcrum of the Creation.

At every step he fights his Maker
Who is leading him on towards an incredible transmutation.
He opposes his colossal ignorance against God’s design,
And runs headlong towards his own ruin and downfall.

Yet the Divine tolerates man’s presumption.
This ephemeral creation is the rough-cut replica of the timeless One,
A crude image formed of seven metals and seven hues of Delight,
He is small and weak in body, but transcendent in spirit.

Man’s arrogance comes from a hidden Knowledge.
His amour-propre has its source in the Divine Self.
His blindness finds strength from a deep luminous well.
His self-assertion is backed by an inborn right of existence.

He challenges fate secretly supported by an Omnipotence.
He kills his fellowmen and does not recoil from death,
He throws away a life’s work in a whimsical moment
Sustained by the deathless Opulence of the bodiless Spirit.

Each child, youth or maiden, each human being, weak or strong,
Slave or master, happy or suffering, despot or kindly,
Is a mystic incarnation for an irretrievable instant.
We are no other than our Father, the Lord, our Mother, the One.

Rise Man, pull down the barricades of time,
Spread out in the vastness of the soul’s vision,
Rise, break out from the golden chrysalis of enchantment.
All is miraculously the Same, be His conscious Portion in time.

******
Niranjan Guha Roy -1956