Eagles have flown aloft taking in their beaks
Our desire for a mornent's life of peace.
Friends, let us indeed,
In pursuit of the flying eagles, proceed.
Who knows when may come over here
Critics wearing red badges
And start the campaign
To pour false praise on poems
Before the daily expanding building
Of the police station
To take into grasp your village, your family
The trembling leaf of your self respect
Gets glued to the daily record
Of that rapier tongued munshi;
It is better now indeed,
In pursuit of the flying eagles, proceed.
In your whole life will not get repaid
Loan on sister's marriage incurred,
Every drop of blood
Sprinkled in the fields
Will not provide colour
Enough to paint the face
Of a serene smiling person.
To add to it further
All the nights of life put together
Will not count down the stars of the sky;
Then, friends, let us, indeed,
In pursuit of the flying eagles proceed.
If you have had on your tongue
The taste of hot gur cooling in the trough,
And seen with open eyes
The glow in the moon lit night
Of the moist field when levelled,
You will definitely do then something
About that devouring vote's paper
That casts grabbing looks
On the green crops in our fields.
Those who have seen golden corncobs
Of maize drying on our roofs,
But have not come across
Contracting prices in the market,
Will never come to grasp
The enmity professed
By that ruling woman in Delhi
With this bare footed village damsel.
In this dungeon of life
When your voice to yourself returns,
Dreams like the unstruck neck of the old ox
In rankling eyes burn,
And the dirt of the streets sticks
To life's most beautiful years,
Then the best thing to do
Is, friends, indeed,
In pursuit of the flying eagles to proceed.
Translated by Tejwant Singh Gill
.