Time speaks to man

Why ask what I am?
I am an enigma to myself,
Moving towards the unknowable.
As I flow through eternity
Old stars die and new worlds are born,
Mountains rise and civilizations fall;
By change alone am I known.
Without pause I proceed,
Changing the present into the past
As I move towards the future.
Your entire history was
But a moment in my existence,
For I was born that instant
The universe burst into being;
I saw the wombs of gas and dust,
I saw Earth in its infancy
Struggling through fire and storm,
I saw giant reptiles become fossils
And great forests turn to coal,
I saw the continents drift apart
And ice invade and retreat
In glacial silence.
Now you play with atoms and genes -
You can reduce cities to ash
And tamper with nature;
You know the ways of galaxies,
Viruses and even your own psyche;

But do you truly know me?
Can you slow me down
Or concoct the elixir of life?
Live in the most sacred places!
Study the esoteric works!
Perform the arcane rituals!
Summon all your genius!
But can you prevent your decay
To oblivion and bone as I flow forth?
Change marks my passage:
Energy and matter in all forms
Are transformed as I progress;
And you try to know me
With the length of shadows,
Sand in the hourglass,
The hands of the clock,
The faces of the moon,
With seconds, days, centuries, epochs.
Just measure me with heartbeats!

- Asgar Hussain

The young poet Asgar Hussain here looks into the seed of time. Here he personifies time which is an abstract concept. Time is something which is continuously moving from eternity.

It has been there from the time universe was born and the earth evolved into what it is today. It has lived through ages witnessing the ice age, emergence and disappearance of great dinosaurs, rise and fall of empires. Though man may measure time, it questions whether man really known it.

 -Indeewara Thilakarathne

Nonagathaya (Period of inactivity)

I watch till...
The dyeing sun disappear
In the twin light making dark shadows
That you rise like a full moon ...
I watch ...
Without knowing that you are the moon-less sky
On the banks of a dried up river with splits
For you to come down like a drop of water
Without blinking in tiredness
I watch...

Without knowing that you are the mirage
To gently pick up a creeper
At the end of the blossomed valley
Without knowing that you are the thorny bush
I watch for you on the way
As if in a habit in the cycle of existence ("Smansara")
In the hope of the your image in mind
For you to come on an auspicious hour
Without knowing that you are the period of inactivity

- Janaki Hill - Translated by Indeewara Thilakarathne

The poem describes passionately the state of the mind of a girl who is deeply in love. She hopes that her lover would turn up like 'a full-moon' against the dyeing sun. However, from the second stanza on, it is clear that the girl's lover is a fake lover. He (the lover) is not a full moon but a moon-less sky, mirage and a thorny bush. The poem, among other things, evokes emotions on the part of the girl towards her lover. One may not come to the conclusion whether the lover is really a fake lover or a person who could not live long to meet the girl.

-Ranga Chandrarathne