Translation: Bijoy Misra

(Created for the WGBH "Poetry in America" Project and recited on Dec 15, 2016, in interview with Lisa New to honor Poet Allen Ginsberg's eulogy to his mother in his Kaddish entitled "Hymmnn") 

Nor there was unreal, or was there anything real, 

Nor there was air, or was there any space, however small,  

What was the covering? Who made it? Where was it? 

Was there deep water everywhere? Mysterious, secret! 

Nor was there death, neither was there rejuvenation, 

No night, no day, no signal, nor there was any motion,  

That One breathed itself, supported all by itself. 

Nothing else was there! Alone, it sustained itself!  

Darkness was there, covered in more void and emptiness, 

Everything was water, undefined nothingness!  

Covered in dense pitch darkness, the One rose by itself,  

Born of its own prowess, by its omnipotence! 

The desire arose in that primitive mind,  

And, arose the primal seed, the first of its kind. 

Poets sang and knew in their own presence,  

The origin of everything lies in their unreal absence!  

Oblique ray stretched across the water,  

What was above and what did stay under? 

Seminal forces begot might and the true nature, 

Self-sustained in the beginning, became the holy future!  

Who, after all, knows, who can discern?  

How the process evolved, how the universe was born! 

The gods have come after the fury of production, 

Who would know the beginning, the first introduction!  

Though the universe is created likewise,  

Does He hold it together or is it otherwise? 

One who surveys the universe from the high heaven,  

He might know, or, Lo! He Might not even! 

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