It is about those days - In the Labyrinth, Satyapal Sehgal

The friendly and agreeable Indian poet Satyapal Sehgal was recently in Vienna's Cafe´ Kafka (see below - 1st June) as part of a Scandinavia-Italy-Austria tour. The English translations of several of Sehgal's poems were read with aplomb by Labyrinth's Peter Waugh.
The following work, the translation here gently edited, appealed to Poet-in-Residence's sense of the bardic. It is a fine thing. In the original language it must be beautiful to read. It sounded so.

It is about those days

It is about those days
when each drop of the rising and setting sunshine
would drench with poetry.

It is about those days
when I would observe the man working in the kitchen
looking at the pigeons' eggs.

A glass of water
would sometimes amaze me.

It is about those days.

But these days it is about my desire
to become a town planner
and create a new town.

Or to go around in a rocket
or work on machines
or speak on the screen.

Those days I was songlike
like a tree in the evening
where a thousand birds were chirping.

Those days I was a child
and wanted to remain only that.

------
Satyapal Sehgal 2009