Crossing over Sixty

CROSSING OVER SIXTY

¼lkB ikj djrs gq,& yhyk/kj txwM+h English translation by GPBahuguna ½

I am not sixty just today.

Every past day, every past night form these years

Could not have reached sixty straight after fifty

Without going through many births I couldn't have faced these ten years

Even after fifty-eight I could not have stepped over to become sixty

Overlapping a fifty-nine in the middle.

Fifty-nine had a crucial role to play.

So I am not sixty just today.

Should I recall my Autumn or the Spring

The rains or the summers

Or should I summon memories of winters past

Without my wears of coat, muffler and shoes.

My days,My years,my seasons and my circumstances

Weighing heavily on each other.

So I am not sixty just today, right now, all alone

Visiting the world of books

I return again and again in the book of life

My essays are scattered filled with poems, novels and stories

Where I include myself among people

Looking for bold steps and tricks

So I am not sixty just today all alone.

There has been many Falls mixed with

nature and circumstance in my life

Due to which I had to buy Spring incessantly

And received many hardships in return

Each hardship had a finish with varied ends.

There were many plots hatched by me against my own self

I regretted but waited for the Spring to arrive

It knocked for the first time at my eleventh year.

So I am not sixty just today .

The blue heaven is spread like a large tent

Extended up to the seventh sky

Filled with the winds of ages.

There are many stakes fixed on the girdle of hill ranges

and peaks

As if this was the limit of the world.

Under the brownish green shade of tall coniferous pine trees

I could hardly save my childhood soaking wet in rain

I felt the heat for the first time in my body

As if I was burning under hot sun

On my sixtieth birthday

I am filled with the impatience of twenty

So I am not sixty just today.

The green minarets of growing cedar trees appear to me

Changing their form in towering mansions.

Like abode of Gods built on mountain slopes

I try to plant in future whatever was left by past

The jungle of yesteryears followed me in Rajasthan also

The century- old trees sent shivers into my body

Like trembles of wires.

Inspired by pricking songs of green thorny acacia bush

in the regions of

Kansli, Kotpootli, Pilani, Pushkar and Baggar

The camel in me learnt to eat thorns

while wading steps in the desert.

Here arrives the Spring nevertheless,

Now the Spring arrives at my Sixty like cumin seed in camels mouth.

So I am not sixty just today.

The flower tops colored in prolific impiety of betrayed austerity

Each shivering of stone on mountain is reflected in lake

I have preserved all missile-arrows of Love-God

To be greased and used later as

I have not reached my eighty yet.

The semen speaks from the top of my head in old age.

No interest being promised on seminal fluid and poems

It could not be retained in fixed deposit

Otherwise only interest could be used by me keeping the principal intact.

I faced many chapters of life

After the fifty-ninth chapter came the Spring in the grip of sixty.

So I am not sixty just today.

Now I realize when it is night outside

And when it is full day inside

Now it is seen when it is full day inside

and when it is all night outside

In darkness forest lie in rest with covered thighs

Its knees raised like high mountains,

The sky pressed close to the bosom of earth

stretching like deep night in the valley.

There is down pouring in the valley of night

filled with crackling sounds of daytime

Sometimes in the night storm

an afternoon-lust sails in the wind.

Then like flakes of fire,the tendrils of sunlight flame up in the bush

The spring ultimately drew close to be under sixty

that I feel I am not sixty just today.

The snow on hill tops down the slopes

where flowers on apple trees

Fall in the rivulet flowing below.

Some buds and shoots stay back

To save the grace of Spring.

The new leaves will learn to be wise

after suffering bruises on itself

to retain the glow of daytime colors even during nights

Like a flake of fire falling apart

Every shining star stood alone to beckon

Now came Spring close to sixty holding

roseum flower in its hand

But I am not sixty just today due to any flower.

On every fall during the past fifty-nine Autumns

Scurrying between village and towns

I saw many old oaks, cedars, teaks,rosewoods and mulberry trees,

standing like multi storied green fountains,

some five, some seven and some ten storied.

I saw more of them near Doiwalla throwing their shades

It is not only today that I bathed in this greenery

I am not sixty just today only.

Keeping the value of love on high stakes

I kept thinking like money players for fifty-nine years

Going on my beat to Jogiwalla

This is my sixtieth Spring flowering in Dehradun

.

Sixty years means- twenty-one thousand six hundred days

And twenty-one thousand six hundred nights

With equal number of sunrise and sunsets

Are spread like veins on the body of time

from the sea level to the height of mountaintops.

The nature of a forest- dweller flourishes in jungle only

The wild nature of Spring finds its joy of colors in the jungle only

In the glow of twain shines the urbanity of renunciation

The radiation coming from every atom has reached my eyes

The Spring has finally come to terms for my benefit.

A universal homeliness pervades in jungle only

It is not tamed by Spring.

In the wilderness of sixty years there is buoyancy of the natural Spring

which comes through roots and not by flight of birds

Betraying self-discipline the Spring loves to haunt

free jungles like freely wandering ascetics.

The Spring will risk its future many times with me.

Finally the spring has come so close to sixty

that it may give lead leaving sixty behind.

So I am not sixty just today

when somebody gave lead to me just toady

Or I trail behind just today.

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Translation into English by Govind Prasad Bahuguna