On the day of walking the backward path

  
 We are very poor now.
 We have money in our pockets,
 but no way to spend it.
 We have time on our hands,
 but no path to spend it as we wish.
 Think about it—where has our poverty led us today!
  
 We no longer have the ability
 to spend even a single rupee as we please.
 So suddenly, we have become this poor!
 We have leisure now, and in that leisure we can at most
 take a little stroll to the next room.
  
 The bird that comes to sit
 at our window every day—we never noticed it before.
 Every day, a few dry leaves
 somehow drift and fall on our balcony.
 The housemaid used to see to these things all this while.
 Today she too is on leave, and so are we.
 So we keep crushing the bodies of those brittle dry leaves
 in the palms of our hands, over and over.
 This is not called anger, not called resentment; this is called helplessness,
 or perhaps unbroken leisure.
  
 We are beginning to understand today
 that to stay alive, sometimes
 one must know how to read poetry,
 one must know how to listen to music,
 one must know how to watch films.
 No one ever told us these things.
 Why didn't they? Only one reason: because we are poor!
 The poor don't need to know everything.
  
 Today we are growing weary from resting.
 That gazing at one's own shadow is also work—
 this never occurred to us before.
  
 Our innocent child, to whom we've been promising
 for so long to take to the zoo,
 breaking that promise with our various busyness—
 suddenly peeks through our room's doorway,
 looks at us, and
 bursts into laughter!
 Though there's the joy of fulfilled desire in her eyes and face,
 we prefer to think,
 Ah, my child's laughter!
 ...We're not thinking anything more for now.
 In hard times, thinking too much is forbidden.
  
 This time will surely dissolve into another time one day.
 That day we will again fill our beloved city
 with dust and commotion.
 Along our walking paths
 some light, some darkness will be scattered,
 and we will say in our old familiar way,
 Life doesn't feel worth living anymore!
  
 Yet see how that person who, disgusted with life,
 had been committing suicide for so many days—
 even that person today cowers in fear of death!