Maharaj Kaul

The day has just begun its triumphant march:
Imperial, rough-shod, crusading.
Its ambitions touch a pinnacle, its mood heroic.
Its commonplace beginning an unintended deception.
In a deft sleight of hand it quantum jumps to its
Brilliant power, melting into frenzied fury,
Maturing into unfocused drunkenness.

A day raids while an evening seduces.
Its mood of grand opulence is inhuman.
It seems to challenge Gods.
Man makes most of day’s immense attributes:
Light and heat.
Which uplift his mood to achieve things and massage his ego.
Day’s bold and brutal reign lingers on
To dissolve into the mystical grandeur of a sunset.

A sunset is an erroneous appendage to a day,
As it has its own character, beauty, and message.
It is meditative, humble, and human.
Its fleeting existence on the horizon
Is dramatic, mystifying, and thought provoking,
Making us think of God, renunciation, other worlds,
Mystery of nature, and transitoriness of life.

Evening has tiptoed invisibly at the end
Of day’s relentlessly furious reign.
Gods pitied man and created the evening,
To balm him, to calm him.
Evening has style, charisma, and serene seductiveness.
It has nothing to announce
But to invite us to an enchanting dance.
Its soothing and romantic transition between
Day and night has given it a place of its own.

An expectant relaxedness, pregnant enthusiasm drapes the mood,
Let aside are material projects and human problems,
Turned off are engines of intellectualized introspection,
Evening seduces man to seek the moment at hand,
To feel the pulse of life, to feel intoxicated,
So it seems there was no yesterday and there will be no tomorrow,
That transience of man is permanent.

In night you enter a different world,
So alien to morning, day, and evening.
Its smooth sensuous serenity is a transforming grandeur,
Its tranquility and dreaminess a supreme elixir
For the daytime stained spirits.
Day raids but night occupies.
Windows to heavens are opened
And for a brief period one thinks that there
Are other worlds besides ours.

Even more removed from the worldly life
Than an evening, night lets one remove
The covers of survival and fear and see
God at a closer proximity.
It is not a mood of gloom,
Not even the resurgence of hope,
But something beyond all that.

Have you seen a night sky in full bloom?
Iridescent with a billion brilliant stars,
Pointing to nature’s opulent oeuvre,
Its magnificent magnitude and transcendent timelessness.
Universe liberates us
And gives us a special status
Because of our ability to comprehend it,
Harnessing many responsibilities on us.

The seemingly impregnable mystery of night is
Wilting to the enigmatic twilight of the pre-dawn.
Hesitant fragile hopes are dampened by the just-born fears
Engendered by the grayish halo wrapping the scene.
In about an hour the predawn morphs to dawn
As the intensity and volume of light increase.
In dawn’s halo everything looks touched in gold.

Diffident and lazy sunrays just graze the earth,
Something mysterious seems to be happening:
A curtain is rising on something.
The limpid tranquility of dawn is enthralling
But at the same time puzzling:
What does it mean?
We are part of a bigger picture.

First hesitant footsteps of sunrays congregate
To perform a mystic dance of light and shade,
Over the sea, over the ground, over the mountain peaks.
While the day raids and the night possesses,
Dawn caresses without touching.
Its shimmering shyness alluding to something
Great and bold, something unique and transcending.

The chariots of morning have now arrived,
Noiselessly and invisibly.
The whole earth seems in a state of awake dreaming,
But still tranquil and mysterious; possessed and in control.
The dreamy majesty of the morning has tinged everything
With ethereality and silence, grace and beauty,
Elegant aura pregnant with obeisance to eternity.

Morning holds man in reverence of what is beyond this world.
It is a door to higher level consciousness:
Which is higher awareness, higher unity with nature, higher tranquility.
The dream to realize a more fulfilled life is possible,
If we take courage to enter the door of the morning
And walk to the horizon of eternity.
Eternity is within grasp if we break our shackles with the world.

Sublime tranquility of morning is a gift of God to man,
To keep his balance in the raucous turbidity of the day,
In the man-made insanity of the world,
To remind him that the doors of heaven are not yet closed on him.
God takes but God also gives.
The pristine glory of morning will remain forever the same,
To elevate the spirit and liberate the soul.
Morning is one of the splendorous faces of eternity.