It Is Time

It is time… it is time… yes, you are all still here,
but I — go yonder,
the clouds have called me with them on their way…

It is time… it is time… already past the edge of sleep
a half-forgotten country of all-being calls.
There silence whispers softly by the river,
there stars are everlasting and no footsteps fall.

I am here, but only as a shadow — not a soul,
toward where the world unveiled itself to me.
It is time… it is time… farewell, all you who wait,
my God is calling me ahead.

Look, the clouds are calling toward a newborn light,
to where there is no past and no tomorrow.
It is time… it is time… to answer to the dawn,
where the light is endless, where time itself is gone.
What stays behind is only a ghost of drifting smoke,
a forgotten corner of my footsteps’ track.

The voice of the world grows quieter at my back,
onward, to that world that wages no war with itself.
There stars are everlasting — vast their light,
there the cry of the heart no longer breaks the night.

It is time… it is time… farewell, my earthly hearth,
I am leaving, yet not into grief’s dark.
There ahead a measureless river flows,
and the clouds bear off my “I” along with them.

It is time… it is time… how quietly behind me
my path has crumbled, like dust on an earthen trail.
There, ahead, breathing with a perfect silence,
eternity has opened, ringing with the sound of stillness.

I hold no longer to the restless throng,
and the cry of suffering was swept off into dark.
The pain forgotten, the struggle left behind,
now I myself am both eternity and fate.

It is time… it is time… how smoothly melts the light,
to where no hidden truths remain at all.
I dissolve into the abyss of silence,
the fires of heaven are calling me home.

It is time…