Poetry
Today -
Ajj
Two Poems translated From Punjabi by NIKKY-GUNINDER KAUR SINGH
AJJ - Today
AMRITA PRITAM
Your feet are pure, my lips are impure;
Today they will touch each other:
Either your feet will be polluted,
Or my lips will become pure. Today
Today something will happen
There is a truth that breeds in a bundle of vice;
The koel bird may have grown up in a nest of crows,
But she has not yet lost the primal language of love.
The purity of your feet, the pollution of my lips,
Today they will cross over each other;
No, no - this cannot happen:
The touchstone remains; iron turns into gold.
Hands of light will wash away the darkness of the storm;
Your pure feet, my impure lips, today will touch.
Today something will happen
Your pure feet, my impure lips
Today will touch;
Your feet are pure, my lips will be
So too today
* * * * *
AJJ - Today
Bhai VIR SINGH
'Yesterday' is gone
Far out of our control;
'Tomorrow' is still away,
Not yet in hand.
'Today' is with us,
Filled with worries though.
Caught up in yesterday and tomorrow,
We let today go for naught.
So hold on to 'today' tightly
Like ambrosial elixir, sip it slowly;
Absorb it, get high on it
Immerse yourself in Divine radiance and praise.
September 17, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Ajit Singh Batra (Pennsville, New Jersey, USA), September 20, 2015, 6:29 AM.
We should be meditating on the daily Hukamnama which originates in the Darbar Sahib and is conveyed to the world through, inter alia, the internet. This will keep us in the 'present' each day and help keep us on the straight and narrow.