THE SECOND CHAPTER

To this we have come, through many sorrows  
past the ashes of Troy, forgetting the tyranny  
and lawlessness, forgetting adultery, the faces  
of rebellion, the loaned houses of Harappa,  
the lanes and corners and swarms of children,  
the memories of those other islands  
washed by the seven seas.  

Will we go back again to that first tangled evening ?  
If we wish to remember today  
Libya's Lotophagi, our friends of countless lotuses,  
to have our fill of many-splendoured dreams,  
to enjoy the soft spume of this rood  
and as swine under Circe's magic spell.  
If here we spend some days— 
why then should we suffer remorse ?  
Why should we invoke phantoms, hoping for prophecies to come about ?  

May be they will shatter our dreams again  
with loud proclamations  
in the words of Gandhi, Buddha, or Jesus.  
  

Translation :
Jayanta Mahapatra