Where has it gone, that noble calmness,

Fresh and pure and graceful greenness,

Edged with a hem of shining blueness,

            Beautiful, kindly world?

Sky’s delight by light excited,

Secretive gardens, coolly shaded,

Where have the buzzing bees retreated –

            What brings us to this pass?

O city, city, jungle of people,

Road after road, buildings innumerable,

Everything buyable, everything saleable,

            Uproar, hubbub, noise.

Enormous profits, thumping crashes,

Sky-polluting foul dust-flurries,

Whipped by the sun into swirling eddies,

            Soiling heaven and earth.

Everything fitful, broken, fleeting,

No lasting sign behind remaining,

A quick combining, fast dividing

            Dash to the sea of death.

Pathetic weeping, raucous revelry,

Tyrannous arrogance, abject slavery,

Futile striving, malicious raillery,

            Hurtling forward en masse.

Nothing fixed for a single moment,

No desire for anything permanent,

Constant activity, ceaseless movement

            By day and by dark of night.

Each in pursuit of a gleaming fantasy,

Desperate to hunt and catch an illusory

Golden deer that dances endlessly –

            Old and young rush on.

It’s like a ritual bonfire leaping,

Snouts and trunks of fire flailing,

Scrabbling and scratching the sky with raging

            Hunger for more and more.

Crowds of men and women around it,

Hurry to heap and stoke and worship it,

Break and smash their lives to nourish it,

            Offer their souls as fuel.

Fanatics serve it with butchered bodies,

Feed it with bones and gushing arteries,

Feeling in all their rites and ecstasies

            Death’s golden allure.

Flames rise high with roaring menace,

Sky is clouded with smoke from the furnace,

Sun and moon disappear in a thunderous

            Universal blaze.

Winds whipped up by heat to a frenzy

Circle the dazzling fire in a fury,

Dismally roam and howl frustratedly,

            Whoosh and hiss and sigh –

Flutter and flap with the helpless terror

Thousands of mother-birds showed at that horror:

Holocaust when the forest of Khandava

            Fell to Agni’s greed.

Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Sudras,

Age and status no longer matters,

All converge as the burning gathers,

            Hurl their lives right in.

Seeing this massive fiery spectacle,

Heart, like a fly, is drawn to the dazzle,

Longs to add to the wild hubble-bubble

            Blood of self-slashed veins.

City, O city, rushing and pouring

Constantly forth like foaming and bubbling

Wine – let me lose myself by drinking

            Deep of your essence today.

Stony nurse of human endeavour,

I shall become your fellow-traveller,

Stay awake with crowds that stagger

            Through drunken, sleepless nights:

Whirling along with the communal frenzy,

Joining the great unfettered orgy,

Sinking my inmost dreams recklessly,

            Let me be part of you.

Peace and calm I’ll treat as nothing,

Plunging down to the depths and soaring

Up on a comet’s tail and stretching

            My arms towards the sun.

Whatever the games that fate has planned for me,

Some of them right and some of them wrong for me,

Some of them sweet and some bitter agony -

            I’ll take them as they come.

Round on the wheel of joy and misery,

Riding high on poetry’s fantasy,

Swooping down with prose’s gravity,

            Swung by the merry-go-round.

Seizing the city’s trumpet of conquest,

Grabbing all that is hardest and furthest,

I the unstoppably wildest and strongest

            Will take what I want by force.

Joining the ranks of the bullies and predators,

Will and desire foisted on others,

Snatching food from my fellow-creatures,

            I’ll tighten my violent grip.

The world in my mind will now be merely

A place for me to stamp on freely:

Kingly rule and daylight robbery

            Seen as different no more.

Wealth and assets I’ll raid and shatter,

Reap my harvest by looting the farmer,

Unleash the king’s great horse to wander

            Brazenly over the world.

Newly thirsty and newly eager,

Hungry for new kinds of work and power,

Page after page swiftly turned over

            In life’s unfolding book.

Crooked and tortuous paths ahead of me,

Start unknown and end not clear to me,

Forward I’ll rush and cross unstoppably

            Rivers, mountains and seas.

Looking ahead and never behind me,

A nestless, restless bird-of-the-night I’ll be,

You, fickle Fortune, laughing, will race me,

            Bewildering will-o’-the-wisp –

I shan’t bow down or beg before you,

I shan’t sit back and passively wait for you,

Let us fight – you’ll see who’ll master you,

            I’ll bring you back in chains.

Human life is not for ever,

Fame and wealth and status and power

Are not the slaves of any owner –

            The river of time takes all.

So for a few days, a few nights only,

Let the clashing and crowded city

Fill the glass of my life completely

            With churning, heady wine.