Design of Fate

My introduction: I tell stories, I dwell in that unknown land...
I will tell you a story—of flowers—from those distant hills.
Everyone called that mountain of a thousand blooms the Flower Hill.
So beautiful, none had seen its like anywhere, know this. Like heaven's garden was that far mountain!
The flowers bloomed only on that hill alone.
How singular their fragrance! Their color like dreams itself!
 
Everyone said, God descends to that hill but once each year.
Nature's magic and the nectar of flowers mingled as one on that mountain.
Yet flowers must fall—this is fate. After some days and nights, all the flowers lay scattered on the ground.
Perhaps Providence had some different design for them. Who knows what!
The flowers lay fallen, and after their fall they saw how the starlight flickered in that sky!
 
Some fallen flowers the insects devoured,
others found their way to pots,
still others took refuge at the deity's feet,
some went to wedding halls to adorn life,
others went to graves to extinguish life!
 
So many flowers remained hidden, unseen by anyone, gathered by none.
They stayed alive on that hill even after death,
silently watching how all the flowers fell one by one,
the same bloom that once received everyone's love, everyone tramples underfoot when beauty fades!
Just as grains of wheat vanish in sand—none can find them though they search a hundred times, none tends them anymore,
so too when life is lost, perhaps none seeks it as before. This is life!
 
The one that butterflies once came to kiss,
whose body swayed in the breeze at will, this way and that,
just as birds beat their wings, so did the petals dance,
when monsoon came it wept terribly, hiding its pain in the rain—
everyone seeing would say then, with this one flower I'll spend my life,
I'll be intoxicated by its scent, I'll pluck it and keep it lovingly against my breast!
So many words, so many vows, hundreds of passionate declarations—flowers love to hear them!
When blooming flowers fall, who values them as before?
Color, form, and essence fade away, before the eyes the world changes, an alien unknown face emerges,
when all the oil is spent, who pays for the lamp's worth, tell me? Perfectly natural!
 
I speak of destiny, listen!
A leaf from some tree,
spent its days happily talking with hundreds of other friends.
Sunlight played on the leaf's surface,
the tender leaf swayed in the breeze,
clouds came too and gently wet it,
thus its days passed quite pleasantly.
 
One day, I know not what happened,
in an instant the leaf fell,
a single leaf beneath the tree,
no playmates left for company.
Alone, it feels no joy,
yet why, alas, does no one come!
 
Another day what happened then,
the leaf went straight to the city.
It fell beneath a car's wheel,
the leaf's eye wet with pain,
that pain the leaf's alone,
no one shares in suffering.
One day in the rain,
the leaf grew soaked, began to rot,
the leaf's body broke piece by piece by piece,
scattered this way and that, carried away by water's current somewhere.
The colorful happy days alas fade away in an instant,
death comes knocking at the door.
 
Life sells itself at the price of death just like this!
When the final day draws near, no one will be close that day.
Everyone, brother, is a fly drawn to happiness—where's the patience to witness sorrow?
See, in happy days how many sway as intimates in the breeze, when sorrow comes how they all flee,
even with much merit stored up, when a person dies in grief, truly close ones then—at most you'll find two!
Live loudly in joy, die silently in sorrow—this is called human life.