When the game breaks apart

What day will it be when I depart this world?
Will there be a star-scattered evening? Or will a moonlit night descend?
Pressed against the body of a flower-blooming dawn, or in the harsh sun of noon?

With whom will I speak for the very last time?
Who will hear the final sentence I utter?
When one star falls from among countless stars,
who keeps track, who truly cares?

Tell me now,
if I were to die this very moment,
would anyone ever know
that I too carried heaps of sorrow in this breast pocket of mine?
Would anyone ever understand
that I too felt afraid, would break into tears thinking of death?

The window grille I hold each day to touch the sky—
will that same sky someday become my home?
My ancestral land, my name and fame,
all my songs and poems, all my stories and tales…
will everything become nameless in an instant?

This body of mine, tended with such care,
this flesh and bone shaped with so much love and nourishment,
even each drop of blood within it—
will all of it be leisurely licked clean and devoured
by the disgusting tribes of insects beneath the earth?

Designer clothes, this parade of precious branded goods,
this body adorned with fragrances from many lands…
will the Ganges water or ordinary soil take it all?
Will they all join together to drag me to the cremation ground or graveyard?
Then is that identity of ash and dust far greater than mine?

Why don't people return to life after dying once?
Why does time slip away from life before an eyelid can fall?
Why can't we live a thousand years if we wish?
Why can't we rest our heads in mother's lap and hear lullabies for eternity?
Why do all of life's truths turn false in death's womb in time's game?
Why is the destiny of conquering an entire world only surrender?