There...

We are caught up in the playing. We’ve forgotten how to pause. We can see that we are troubled. But we rarely see the cause.

By Arjun Janah in Berkeley, California

There, beyond the mountains,

There’s an elevated plain.

There are herders there and farmers

And there’s pleasure there and pain.

There are songs that people sing there

Of Nature, love, and grief.

There are songs of distant ages

And of healing and belief.

******

The nature, deep, of being,

In its essence, is the same

In the highlands and the lowlands—

And the nature of the game.

We are caught up in the playing.

We’ve forgotten how to pause.

We can see that we are troubled

But we rarely see the cause.

******

High upon the mountain,

The winds are blowing strong.

We can see the clouds are streaming

But we can’t see right and wrong.

There’s a birth, a life, an ending.

There are seasons of the year.

There are valleys tucked in mountains.

There are those who’re close and dear.

******

There, beyond our lifetimes,

Are there birthings yet again—

And lives to live and seasons,

With pleasure strung with pain?

Will we meet, beyond the mountain,

The ones we loved and lost?

Will we hear the songs familiar—

Or will this all be lost?

2025 November 25, Tue.

Berkeley, California

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Abstract

This poem (There) is in four parts. The first speaks of a land ‘beyond the mountains’ and of the activities of people there. The second part notes firstly that life ‘there’, ‘here’, and everywhere is connected and in essence the same, and secondly, that we often live in the fog of what Indian tradition calls maaya.

The third part of the poem reminds us of that, while drawing attention to the movement everywhere, the transient phases and connections in the life of an individual. The fourth part draws a parallel between the ‘land beyond the mountain’ and the possibility of an afterlife and even reunions.

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Arjun Janah is a retired New York City public school science teacher who grew up in Kolkata and studied in Delhi. He went to the USA in 1975 to do his doctorate in physics, and has remained there for family reasons. He had been active in his teacher's union in New York. He has been stuck for almost three years in Berkeley, California, but his permanent residence is in Brooklyn, New York. Arjun has been following the events in Palestine for a long time and many of his writings over the past two years have had to do with those. More of his poems can be found at: https://thedailypoet.blogspot.com