Part II — Amrita

I

What we understand easily we believe we understand rightly,
We make a confusion between the face and its mask.
We think the horizon line is the finishing line,
We forget that a blue sky stretches still beyond.

The world is built with the tears and smiles of the gods...
A child is at play on the sandy beaches:
He is never to be met in the crowd...
A jewel knows not itself, nor does a pearl know that it is a pearl!

The goal fixed for ever, for ever he goes on,
The path offers no bar, no call reaches from behind:
Lo!
The eternal voyager, eternally free,
Eyes ever turned to the dawning East, never to the setting West.

He hides behind a veil and moves on...
Is it the stream?
Is it the ocean vast?

— Nolini Kanta Gupta

Translated from the Bengali of Robi Gupta