GOD?

Poem for Today - Thursday May 15, 2014

TO GOD

How many things they say about you –

that you created the expanding universe,

or was it that the world’s people

created you? Whose side do you choose?

The rich – who take more than their due

and toss scraps to the poor, and toss you too?

Or the poor – who hope you’ll soon turn things upside down

and so deliver them? But you never do.

In battle, you sit by the victor.

Nietzsche says, you’re dead.
Pascal says, we can’t know whether or not you exist,

but it’s worse to be fooled disbelieving.

These are weighty and deep philosophical questions. I see

a forest behind me, a desert in front of me,

and man in the middle, in his encampments.

and bullock carts hauling heaps of beef everyday.

© Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay

Translated from the Bengali

by Robert McNamara and

the author.