Classic Poem

Within this blissful heaven the earth
I took my pleasure, creating fantasies.
Like a desert was what it all became.
As though the night has fallen
I just now barely understand
Suddenly the world is like a night.
So long as I was living I could not grasp it.
At the end I learned Shri Krishna was the only one,
but I had no knowledge, no wisdom, and no devotion.
Hot as an atom in a vast desert
I burn, dying without hope, dumb.
I am empty as a dried-out tree,
heating in the funeral fire I threw off
my sacraments like water.
I have lost everything. I disappear
like emptiness into emptiness.
In this heaven I was born and thrived;
at the end, uselessly,
I turn to ash and disappear.