The Most Dangerous Thing

By Pash

(Translated  from a Hindi translation of the original Punjabi poem to English by Amitabha Bagchi)

The theft of your toil is not the most dangerous thing
The blow of police batons is not the most dangerous thing
The clasped fist of treacherous greed is not the most dangerous thing

Caught unawares, unprepared - is bad
To be tangled in silence, scared - is bad
But it is not the most dangerous thing

The most dangerous thing is
Is to live in death, silent
To feel no agony, insentient
Between home and work
To let every day slip by
The most dangerous thing
Is for our dreams to die

The most dangerous thing is that frozen eye
Which can see, but only see, everything
Whose sight cannot kiss the world, cannot love
Which is blinded by the fog rising from things
Which, caught in the mundane, the everyday
Conflicted, aimless, drifts from its moorings

The most dangerous thing is that Western horizon
In which the sun of your soul sets
Whose dying sunlight throws one final ray
Which pierces your East like a dart