TURN BACK

 

By C. RAJAGOPALA CHARI

 

Ye that have ears that hear!

The ghost of Einstein speaks:

 

I lifted the golden lid

And showed you Truth!

I showed you how

The truth can never be known.

 

We don’t know where we are,

We know but the company we keep:

Whether we move or whether we rest

We cannot say

But only know what company we keep.

 

Matter and Energy

Are one and same

Energy but slept to seem inert

Pretending to be harmless matter

Sun and Earth were one

Space and Time were interlocked,

Earth could glow if roused from sleep

And burn again like the living Sun.

 

My friends and I

We showed you this and more

But to our warning grave you paid no heed.

Chased by wasteful greed and lashed by fear

You ran to rouse the wrath

Of mystic sleeping matter;

And now you are ready

To fling the world into all-consuming Nothing!

 

Alas, that my friends and I revealed

What we alone should have known.

O foolish men!

Are you tired of the play so soon?

It took a billion billion years to make,

Couldn’t you wait

One by one to die

 

And let the play go smoothly on?

You invite the Universal fire

To open its pitiless mouth

For those you hate, not knowing

That the doom of hate

Is self-destruction.

 

The power you brandish stops not where it falls:

Unquenchable fire is not for man

To unleash when Time had cooled it down.

Turn back at once from this fiendish course,

For soon too late with surely be.

 

An Angel came

To lift you out of darkness dense

He lighted your path to greatness true:

Turn not your back on Him

Now blinded by fear;

His aid seek who all mists will lift

The mists of fear and the mists of hate and pride.

 

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