(To the Astronauts)

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“It isn’t necessary that everyone receive the same answer;

  Come, let us also take a stroll on Mount Sinai”

—Ghalib

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The world’s expanse of colour and smell is small;

Where is this new search taking us again?

We are flying to the limits of sight;

The sun and moon in our path—

We are making them fellow-travellers.

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Earth is a curtain of tulip and eglantine;

The sky is still the curtain of the Milky Way;

The secret of nature has revealed much of itself to us,

Yet this secret is still hidden.

The story we began centuries ago—

That story is still unfinished.

Destinations became the dust of the journey and flew away,

And still the caravan is on its way;

Drinking the old wine of failures,

Our taste for searching is still young.

Hands were cut off for the boldness of longing;

Blood dripped from them and they flowered; 

When astonishment stamped the seal of silence,

Lips became magic-tongued in their silence; 

When mountains came in our way, we

Became so restless that we changed into a flowing deluge; 

Since eternity, we have been captive on the planet Earth;

We became expanseless in our confines;

The taste of flight is also a leap of the heart; 

From the earth we became the decoration of heaven.

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Clever reason has brought the news:

There is a bedchamber in the palace of the moon, 

Sweethearts with fire bodies await

In the arches of glittering space.

How many attractive, beautiful dreams are awake

In the sleepless eyes of the moon and Mercury;

Pull again at the tresses of the blue beloved;

Take the flame again in your restless hand.

Tidings to the moon-like beauties of the firmament;

The man of sight from the earth’s assembly has come; 

Wish beauty the joy of unveiling herself;

The sharp-sighted one, the renter of veils, has come;

                          .

~~~

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The star which broke and fell from the sky, 

Has arrived on the shoulders of the moon 

With the glass of the heart’s sorrow in his hand;

He comes rubbing his face with heart’s blood;

In the gathering of planets moving in the heaven

Has come a skilful maker of planets.

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But one’s longing is not limited to the moon alone;

Heaven’s heights are greater still;

Pleiades speed after Pleiades;

Another Milky Way beyond this one;

Through Space’s veil peep

Many other colour-and-light valleys, 

Many other destinations, many other hardships;

Still many more of these [valleys, destinations, hardships] of love.

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Today the candle of wisdom is held by the hand of inspired madness;

The hands of madness today hold the candle of wisdom

Whose flame fills the two worlds;

Let all the suns hidden in the void

Come bringing the message of the dawn;

Tell lightning to manifest itself;

It is not Moses, but we, who are today on Mount Sinai.

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  13 April 1961

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From:   Ek k̲h̲vāb aur (One More Dream), 1965. pp. 27-31