Rajendra Bhandari

Baje has become incapable of going down to the fields.
Last year, using a stick, he could reach the yard.
This time he only made it to the porch.
After a three day confinement, Baje passed away.
Boju passed away.

Then mother began to pass away.
At first, she passed from the bazaar to seclusion.
Then she passed from the yard to the porch.
At the porch she became a scarecrow to the grain
drying in the yard.

The light passed from her eyes,
From her legs, the strength to stand.
Even her desires were passing,
she passed away herself.

One day, a wild young thing flirted with me
But like a calm lake, I pooled by her side.
Youth was passing from me.

In the yellow autumn, in floe fields
the paddy was passing into haystacks.
The grain had passed and become manure.

The world itself is passing every day.
The atmosphere is passing into the ozone hole.
With the passing of seedling, and of plant
the passing of flower and dead leaves
the passing of leaf and shoot
the passing of bud and flower.
With these passages
the venerable lotus passed from the face of the earth

But time has not passed
Time is just not there
Time would pass; if it at all existed.