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A Tree
A tree beside the sandy river-beach
Holds up its topmost boughs
Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,
Earth-bound, heaven amorous.
This is the soul of man. Body and brain
Hungry for earth our heavenly flight detain.
| sad |
Sri Krishna
O immense Light and thou, O spirit-wide boundless Space,
Whom have you clasped and hid, deathless limbs, gloried face?
Vainly lie 'Space and Time, "Void are we, there is none."
Vainly strive Self and World crying, "I, I alone."
One is there, Self of self, Soul of space, Fount of Time,
Heart of hearts, Mind of minds, He alone sits, sublime.
Oh, no void Absolute self-absorbed, splendid, mute,
Hands that clasp hold and red lips that kiss blow the flute.
All He loves, all He moves, all are His, all are He!
Many limbs sate His whims, hear His sweet ecstasy.
Two in One, Two who know difference rich in sense,
Two to clasp, One to be, this His strange mystery. | love |
Who
In the blue of the sky, in the green of the forest,
Whose is the hand that has painted the glow?
When the winds were asleep in the womb of the ether,
Who was it roused them and bade them to blow?
He is lost in the heart, in the cavern of Nature,
He is found in the brain where He builds up the thought:
In the pattern and bloom of the flowers He is woven,
In the luminous net of the stars He is caught.
In the strength of a man, in the beauty of woman,
In the laugh of a boy, in the blush of a girl;
The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,
Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl.
These are His works and His veils and His shadows;
But where is He then? by what name is He known?
Is He Brahma or Vishnu? A man or a woman?
Bodied or bodiless? twin or alone?
We have love for a boy who is dark and resplendent,
A woman is lord of us, naked and fierce.
We have seen Him a-muse on the snow of the mountains,
We have watched Him at work in the heart of the spheres.
We will tell the whole world of His ways and His cunning:
He has rapture of torture and passion and pain;
He delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping,
Then lures with His joy and His beauty again.
All music is only the sound of His laughter,
All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss;
Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridal
Of Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss.
He is strength that is loud in the blare of the trumpets,
And He rides in the car and He strikes in the spears;
He slays without stint and is full of compassion;
He wars for the world and its ultimate years.
In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages,
Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,
Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinker
He is throned in His seats that for ever endure.
The Master of man and his infinite Lover,
He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see;
We are blind with our pride and the pomp of our passions,
We are bound in our thoughts where we hold ourselves free.
It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,
And into the midnight His shadow is thrown;
When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,
He was seated within it immense and alone. | peace |
Revelation
Someone leaping from the rocks
Past me ran with windblown
locks Like a startled bright surmise
Visible to mortal eyes, —
Just a cheek of frightened rose
That with sudden beauty glows,
Just a footstep like the wind
And a hurried glance behind,
And then nothing, — as a thought
Escapes the mind ere it is caught.
Someone of the heavenly rout
From behind the veil ran out. | sad |
The Silver Call
There is a godhead of unrealised things
To which Time's splendid gains are hoarded dross;
A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings
Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.
All eye has seen and all the ear has heard
Is a pale illusion by some greater voice
And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,
No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice
Can equal these diviner ecstasies.
A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken
Of those yet unimagined harmonies,
The fate and privilege of unborn men.
As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose. | joy |
Surrender
O THOU of whom I am the instrument,
O secret Spirit and Nature housed in me,
Let all my mortal being now be blent
In Thy still glory of divinity.
I have given my mind to be dug Thy channel mind,
I have offered up my will to be Thy will :
Let nothing of myself be left behind
In our union mystic and unutterable.
My heart shall throb with the world-beats of Thy 1ove;
My body become Thy engine for earth-use;
In my nerves and veins Thy rapture's streams shall move ;
My thoughts shall be hounds of Light for Thy power to loose.
Keep only my soul to adore eternally
And meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee. | love |
Krishna
At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.
I have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,
And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,
And known a deathless ecstasy's surprise
And sorrow in my heart for ever mute.
Nearer apd nearer now the music draws,
Life shudders with a strange felicity;
All Nature is a wide enamoured pause
Hoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.
For this one moment lived the ages past;
The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last | joy |
The Blue Bird
I am the bird of God in His blue;
Divinely high and clear
I sing the notes of the sweet and the true
For the god's and the seraph's ear.
I rise like a fire from the mortal's earth
Into a griefless sky
And drop in the suffering soil of his birth
Fire-seeds of ecstasy.
My pinions soar beyond Time and Space
Into unfading Light;
I bring the bliss of the Eternal's face
And the boon of the Spirit's sight.
I measure the worlds with my ruby eyes;
I have perched on Wisdom's tree
Thronged with the blossoms of Paradise
By the streams of Eternity.
Nothing is hid from my burning heart;
My mind is shoreless and still;
My song is rapture's mystic art,
My flight immortal will. | sad |
Bride of the Fire
Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close, -
Bride of the Fire!
I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose,
I have slain desire.
Beauty of the Light, surround my life, -
Beauty of the Light!
I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief,
I can bear thy delight.
Image of Ecstasy, thrill and enlace, -
Image of Bliss!
I would see only thy marvellous face,
Feel only thy kiss.
Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -
Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
O living sun. | love |
A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river’s song,
A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began.
| sad |
Musa Spiritus
O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.
Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole; | love |
Invitation
With wind and the weather beating round me
Up to the hill and the moorland I go.
Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?
Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?
Not in the petty circle of cities
Cramped by your doors and your walls I dwell;
Over me God is blue in the welkin
Against me the wind and the storm rebel.
I sport with solitude here in my regions,
Of misadventure have me a friend.
Who would live largely?Who would live freely?
Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.
I am the lord of tempest and mountain,
I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.
Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side | courage |
The Miracle of Birth
I saw my soul a traveller through Time;
From life to life the cosmic ways it trod,
Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime,
Evolving from the worm into the god.
A spark of the eternal Fire, it came
To build a house in Matter for the Unborn.
The inconscient sunless Night received the flame,
In the brute seed of things dumb and forlorn
Life stirred and Thought outlined a gleaming shape
Till on the stark inanimate earth could move,
Born to somnambulist Nature in her sleep
A thinking creature who can hope and love.
Still by slow steps the miracle goes on,
The Immortal's gradual birth mid mire and stone. | peace |
Because Thou Art
Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;
It bears thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.
Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune:
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.
It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring thee on their fiery wings;
Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone.
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the futures passionate hope is Thou | peace |
The Inner Fields
There is a brighter ether than this blue
Pretence of an enveloping heavenly vault,
Royaler investiture than this massed assault
Of emerald rapture pearled with tears of dew.
Immortal spaces of cerulean hue
Are in our reach and fields without this fault
Of drab brown earth and streams that never halt
In their deep murmur which white flowers strew
Floating like stars upon a strip of sky.
This world behind is made of truer stuff
Than the manufactured tissue of earth's grace.
There we can walk and see the gods go by
And sip from Hebe's cup nectar enough
To make for us heavenly limbs and deathless face. | joy |
The Golden Light
Thy golden Light came down into my brain
And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
A calm illumination and a flame.
Thy golden Light came down into my throat,
And all my speech is now a tune divine,
A paean-song of Thee my single note;
My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.
Thy golden Light came down into my heart
Smiting my life with Thy eternity;
Now has it grown a temple where Thou art
And all its passions point towards only Thee.
Thy golden Light came down into my feet,
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat. | peace |
Evolution (revised)
I passed into a lucent still abode
And saw as in a mirror crystalline
An ancient Force ascending serpentine
The unhasting spirals of the aeonic road.
Earth was a cradle for the arriving god
And man but a half-dark half-luminous sign
Of the transition of the veiled Divine
From Matter's sleep and the tormented load
Of ignorant life and death to the Spirit's light.
Mind liberated swam Light's ocean vast,
And life escaped from its grey tortured line;
I saw Matter illumining its parent Night.
The soul could feel into infinity cast
Timeless God-bliss the heart incarnadine. | surprise |
Bande Mataram
Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving, Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease,
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother, I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,
When the swords flash out in twice seventy million hands
And seventy millions voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call, Mother and Lord!
Thou who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foemen drave
Back from plain and sea
And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou our heart, our soul, our breath,
Thou the love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother, lend thine ear.
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Dark of hue, O candid-fair
In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free. | love |
The Word of The Silence
A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure, virgin of will.
Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature's rim.
But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence' ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.
All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release. | peace |
The Universal Incarnation
There is a Wisdom like a brooding Sun,
A Bliss in the heart's crypt grown fiery white,
The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,
A Silence on the mountains of delight.
A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees;
A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth's pain;
A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man.
Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,
Our strength a parody of the Immortal's power,
Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal's way
Hunting the fugitive beauty of an hour.
Only on the heart's veiled door the word of flame
Is written, the secret and tremendous Name. | peace |
The Witness Spirit
I dwell in the spirit's calm nothing can move
And watch the actions of Thy vast world-force,
Its mighty wings that through infinity move
And the Time-gallopings of the deathless Horse.
This mute stupendous Energy that whirls
The stars and nebulae in its long train,
Like a huge Serpent through my being curls
With its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain.
It rises from the dim inconscient deep
Upcoiling through the minds and hearts of men,
Then touches on some height of luminous sleep
The bliss and splendour of the eternal plane.
All this I bear in me, untouched and still
Assenting to Thy all-wise inscrutable will. | peace |
Nirvana
All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief,
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still.
Replaces all, - what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite. | peace |
The Call of The Impossible
Our godhead calls us in unrealised things.
Asleep in the wide fields of destiny,
A world guarded by Silence' rustling wings
Sheltered their fine impossibility.
But part, but quiver the cerulean gates,
Close splendours look into our dreaming eyes;
We bear proud deities and magnificent fates;
Faces and hands come near from Paradise.
What shone thus far above is here in us;
Bliss unattained our future's birthright is;
Beauty of our dim soul is amorous,
We are the heirs of infinite widenesses.
The impossible is the hint of what shall be,
Mortal the door to immortality. | peace |
The Dreamboat
Who was it that came to me in a boat made of dream-fire,
With his flame brow and his sun-gold body?
Melted was the silence into a sweet secret murmur,
"Do you come now? Is the heart's fire ready?"
Hidden in the recesses of the heart something shuddered,
It recalled all that the life's joy cherished,
Imaged the felicity it must leave lost forever,
And the boat passed and the gold god vanished.
Now within the hollowness of the world's breast inhabits -
For the love died and the old joy ended -
Void of a felicity that has fled, gone for ever,
And the gold god and the dream boat come not. | sad |
Cosmic Consciousness
I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self
And Time and Space my spirit's seeing are.
I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,
I am the wind's speed and the blazing star.
All Nature is the nursling of my care,
I am its struggle and the eternal rest;
The world's joy thrilling runs through me, I bear
The sorrow of millions in my lonely breast.
I have learned a close identity with all,
Yet am by nothing bound that I become;
Carrying in me the universe's call
I mount to my imperishable home.
I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,
Yet still am one with born and unborn things. | peace |
The Kingdom Within
There is a kingdom of the spirit's ease.
It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,
Foam from the world-sea or spray-whisper caught,
With which we build mind's shifting symmetries,
Nor in life's stuff of passionate unease,
Nor the heart's unsure emotions frailty wrought
Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon brought to nought
Nor in this body's solid transiences.
Wider behind than the vast universe
Our spirit scans the drama and the stir,
A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power
Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse
That veils it from its ignorant minister,
The grandeur of its free eternal hour. | love |
Life And Death
Life, death, - death, life; the words have led for ages
Our thought and consciousness and firmly seemed
Two opposites; but now long-hidden pages
Are opened, liberating truths undreamed.
Life only is, or death is life disguised, -
Life a short death until by Life we are surprised. | peace |
Bride of the Fire
Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close, -
Bride of the Fire!
I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose,
I have slain desire.
Beauty of the Light, surround my life, -
Beauty of the Light!
I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief,
I can bear thy delight.
Image of Ecstasy, thrill and enlace, -
Image of Bliss!
I would see only thy marvellous face,
Feel only thy kiss.
Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -
Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
O living sun. | hate |
Ocean Oneness
Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.
Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.
Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever. | peace |
I Have A Hundred Lives
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O Spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear,
And in thy spirit's motions half-possess,
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed. | sad |
The Unseen Infinite
Arisen to voiceless unattainable peaks
I meet no end, for all is boundless He,
An absolute Joy the wide-winged spirit seeks,
A Might, a Presence, an Eternity.
In the inconscient dreadful dumb Abyss
Are heard the heart-beats of the Infinite.
The insensible midnight veils His trance of bliss,
A fathomless sealed astonishment of Light.
In His ray that dazzles our vision everywhere,
Our half-closed eyes seek fragments of the One:
Only the eyes of Immortality dare
To look unblinded on that living Sun.
Yet are our souls the Immortal's selves within,
Comrades and powers and children of the Unseen. | sad |
Life
Mystic Miracle, daughter of Delight,
Life, thou ecstasy,
Let the radius of thy flight
Be eternity.
On thy wings thou bearest high
Glory and disdain,
Godhead and mortality,
Ecstasy and pain.
Take me in thy wild embrace
Without weak reserve
Body dire and unveiled face;
Faint not, Life, nor swerve.
All thy bliss I would explore,
All thy tyranny.
Cruel like the lion's roar,
Sweet like springtide be.
Like a Titan I would take,
Like a God enjoy,
Like a man contend and make,
Revel like a boy.
More I will not ask of thee,
Nor my fate would choose;
King or conquered let me be,
Live or lose.
Even in rags I am a god;
Fallen, I am divine;
High I triumph when down-trod,
Long I live when slain. | sad |
God
Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,
Yet sitst above,
Master of all who work and rule and know,
Servant of Love!
Thou who disdainest not the worm to be
Nor even the clod,
Therefore we know by that humility
That thou art God. | surprise |
Liberation
I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind
And stand now in the spirit's silence free,
Timeless and deathless beyond creature-kind,
The centre of my own eternity.
I have escaped and the small self is dead;
I am immortal, alone, ineffable;
I have gone out from the universe I made,
And have grown nameless and immeasurable.
My mind is hushed in a wide and endless light,
My heart a solitude of delight and peace,
My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight,
My body a point in white infinities.
I am the one Being's sole immobile Bliss:
No one I am, I who am all that is. | joy |
Soul In The Ignorance
Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.
Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,
Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre.
One, universal, ensphering creation,
Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,
Feel thyself God-born, know thyself deathless.
Timeless return to thy immortal existence. | peace |
The Godhead
I sat behind the dance of Danger's hooves
In the shouting street that seemed a futurist's whim,
And suddenly felt, exceeding Nature's grooves,
In me, enveloping me the body of Him.
Above my head a mighty head was seen,
A face with the calm of immortality
And an omnipotent gaze that held the scene
In the vast circle of its sovereignty.
His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze ;
The world was in His heart and He was I:
I housed in me the Everlasting's peace,
The strength of One whose substance cannot die.
The moment passed and all was as before;
Only that deathless memory I bore. | peace |
Transformation: Sonnet
My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream;
It fills my members with a might divine:
I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.
Time is my drama or my pageant dream.
Now are my illumined cells joy’s flaming scheme
And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine
Channels of rapture opal and hyaline
For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.
I am no more a vassal of flesh,
A slave to Nature and her leaden rule;
I am caught no more in the senses’ narrow mesh.
My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My body is God’s happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. | courage |
To Weep Because
To weep because a glorious sun has set
Which the next morn shall gild the east again;
To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate
Which by that force a double strength attain;
To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife
Joy could not be, to make a terror of death
Who smiling beckons us to farther life,
And is a bridge for the persistent breath;
Despair and anguish and the tragic grief
Of dry set eyes, or such disastrous tears
As rend the heart, though meant for its relief,
And all man's ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes the span
Of life the limit of immortal man. | sad |
Kamadeva
When in the heart of the valleys and hid by the roses
The sweet Love lies,
Has he wings to rise to his heavens or in the closes
Lives and dies?
On the peaks of the radiant mountains if we should meet him
Proud and free,
Will he not frown on the valleys? Would it befit him
Chained to be?
Will you then speak of the one as a slave and a wanton,
The other too bare?
But God is the only slave and the only monarch
We declare.
It is God who is Love and a boy and a slave for our passion
He was made to serve;
It is God who is free and proud and the limitless tyrant
Our souls deserve. | peace |
The Guest - Sonnet
I have discovered my deep deathless being:
Masked by my front of mind, immense, serene
It meets the world with an Immortal's seeing,
A god-spectator of the human scene.
No pain and sorrow of the heart and flesh
Can tread that pure and voiceless sanctuary.
Danger and fear, Fate's hounds, slipping their leash
Rend body and nerve, - the timeless Spirit is free.
Awake, God's ray and witness in my breast,
In the undying substance of my soul
Flamelike, inscrutable the almighty Guest.
Death nearer comes and Destiny takes her toll;
He hears the blows that shatter Nature's house:
Calm sits He, formidable, luminous. | peace |
Oh Lord, what shall I say to You?
by Anandamurti (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar)
English version by Gunther Smith
Oh Lord, what shall I say to You?
You have broken my dark slumber,
and now I shall move on the Path of Light.
I shall move, I shall move, I shall move.
My flower, which was long neglected,
You have threaded in Your garland.
The offerings of my mind,
which were soiled with dust,
You have taken onto Your lap.
I exchange all I had, for I have received You.
To You alone I will listen.
I will listen, I will listen, I will listen. | peace |
Oh unknown traveler, you come alone
by Anandamurti (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar)
English version by Gunther Smith
Oh unknown traveler, you come alone.
At the end of night when the jasmine flower fell.
Seeing my door closed, you stood by the wayside.
My eyes half closed in sleep, some things I could see, and some things I could not.
Then you went away at dawn, wet with the mist at the end of night, floating in the infinite void.
The jasmine creeper at my door still carries the message of your arrival.
Removing its drops of dew, it remains awake, ever waiting for you.
If at that time, I had opened my door, and whispered a word in your ear that autumn midnight,
I would have floated aloft, and mingled myself in your melody. | peace |
On the path of the journey to effulgence,
by Anandamurti (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar)
English version by Gunther Smith
On the path of the journey to effulgence,
all are invited today, hence, I call.
The Earth, swinging in the great universal swing, has become beautiful.
Today, there is no discrimination.
Come all together, forgetting rivalry, let us all jointly announce that we are one and will remain one.
All hearts are threaded in the same garland of gems. Let us all sing the song in the same tune.
There is no high or low, black or white. All are brothers in the world.
Pain or earnestness of one, is pain or earnestness of all.
All hearts oscillate in the same swing, within the ocean of nectar, singing one song.
Full of love, arousing hope, speaking in the same tone?look ahead.
Extending love to both friend and foe, singing the song of pardon, let us go forward. | love |
The violin of all human minds
by Anandamurti (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar)
English version by Gunther Smith
The violin of all human minds is playing with one harmony today, and so is the scent of every heart.
With Your sweet appearance, You have descended on the Earth, giving the same realization.
Do not break this garland of flowers, which is the entire wealth of my love.
Come closer and still closer and closer;
and take away my everything. | love |
At dusk, at dawn I gaze upon your beauty
by Darshan Singh
English version by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi
Original Language Urdu
At dusk, at dawn I gaze upon your beauty --
A dazzling spectacle of rising moon and sun.
So far, the wayfarers have not discovered your footprints:
They stand staring at the stepstone of your door
Your glance of abundant grace did not satisfy;
We with the seeing eye know a glance from a glance.
Saqi, they've just arrived and taken their seats;
How is it that they've already gained intimacy?
Some you inspire with the madness of prostration:
They cannot tell their heads from your door.
Saqi, whoever comes by even a tinge of awakening
We see sitting in your assembly, oblivious to this world.
Men who are maddened by the thought of the goal
See not fellow travelers -- they are intent on the road.
Master, in what strange state your Darshan lives:
We always see his eyes moist with tears. | joy |
How did I ever think silence the language of love?
by Darshan Singh
English version by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi
Original Language Urdu
How did I ever think silence the language of love?
What I thought would not come to light was in plain sight.
I hear my silence talked of in every lane;
The suppression of a cry is itself a cry of pain.
The beloved's regard was but a flash of light;
How innocent to think I'd found eternal bliss.
These, too, in the end were the gardener's: the lightning and the wind
And that handful of pitiful straws I'd called my nest.
Darshan, the glances I'd fancied voiced my love --
Even they couldn't convey the unplumbed depths of my longing. | love |
How should I tell of the feeling that reigns
by Darshan Singh
English version by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi
Original Language Urdu
How should I tell of the feeling that reigns in the court of the friend?
Dancing light is my beloved's face, cup and carafe are ecstatic!
Every nook and cranny is effulgent with his light;
Every mote and grain celebrates the beloved's face.
On earth from end to end I see his beauty,
In heaven after heaven I gaze upon my friend.
Seeker banished from the beatific vision, look through the eyes of your heart!
How can you see the beloved's light with eyes of flesh and blood?
Man's sorrows I bore, this world I loved --
My whole life I gave to the work of my friend.
Brushing past me, it stirred my heart and was gone:
God! The morning breeze has learned to tease from my friend.
Let them try to imprison him in temple, mosque and church!
The seeing eye finds the beloved's signs in every mote.
Very near your heart are seekers of your vision;
Those who look at the surface are exiled from the beloved's light.
What can I say of the grace he showers on me within?
Darshan, the moment I close my eyes, the beloved's light begins. | love |
In what state was I
by Darshan Singh
English version by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi
Original Language Urdu
Who knows, in what state was I when I met her eyes?
Where, who was I? Completely lost.
For you that sun and that moon are gaudy snares:
Beware, lest caught, your gaze rise no higher.
My love -- the paradise at my journey's end -- is annoyed.
Why does every path seem so lonesome?
Impetuous tipplers, have regard for the goblets and cups!
As you journey through the world of hearts, step gently.
My madness knows why, nightlong, desperate with sorrow,
I rush about with tearful eyes, embracing shadows.
I follow no guide, no creed -- just an inkling of the way:
A tug at my heart leads me forward.
Friends, we must not let the darkness enshroud us again!
So many kissed the gallows before we saw this dawn.
When beauty herself provokes a look, therein lies the thrill:
Were she not so expectant, what would compel my eyes?
Darshan, life is the confluence of reality and dream:
In this union lies the exaltation of a human being.
| love |
Wonder of wonders!
by Darshan Singh
English version by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi
Original Language Urdu
Wonder of wonders! What grace flows within the saqi's tavern!
The secrets of both worlds are an open book in his cup.
Why do you seek in the temple? What will you find in the Ka'aba?
Open your inner eye, look in the idol house of your heart.
Friends, by morning you'll find nothing here but ashes:
My heart also burns, with the same sorrow as the moth.
The wine of Truth the saqi keeps concealed in his eyes,
Whatever he pours in the cup deceives thirst.
Who is aware of this wonder? Without instruments
Resounds a symphony in the chamber of the heart!
Saqi, is slaying my desire your kind of mercy?
I hear endless ecstasy reigns in your tavern.
In moments of quietude, I often begin to wonder:
Is a musician playing a melody within my joyful heart?
In all your life, Darshan, nowhere will you find
A joy to rival the rapture of Master's tavern.
| peace |
Ah, Come Sit Beside Me
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
Ah, come sit beside me by the sea, open and free.
I will tell thee of that inward calmness
As of the still deep;
Of that inward freedom
As of the skies;
Of that inward happiness
As of the dancing waters.
And as now the moon makes a silent path on the dark sea,
So beside me lies the clear path of pure understanding.
The groaning sorrow is hid under a mocking smile,
The heart is heavy with the burden of corruptible love,
The deceptions of the mind pervert thought.
Ah, come sit beside me
Open and free.
As the even flow of clear sunlight,
So shall thine understanding come to thee.
The burdensome fear of anxious waiting
Shall go from thee as the waters recede before the rushing winds.
Ah, come sit beside me,
Thou shalt know of the understanding of true love.
As the mind drives the blind clouds,
So shall thy brutish prejudice be driven by clear thought.
The moon is in love with the sun
And the stars fill the skies with their laughter.
Oh, come sit beside me
Open and free.
| peace |
I Am All
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
I am the blue firmament and the black cloud,
I am the waterfall and the sound thereof,
I am the graven image and the stone by the wayside,
I am the rose and the falling petals thereof,
I am the flower of the field and the sacred lotus,
I am the sanctified waters and the still pool,
I am the tree that towereth among the mountains
And the blade of grass in the peaceful lane,
I am the tender spring leaf and the evergreen foliage.
I am the barbarian and the sage,
I am the impious and the pious,
I am the ungodly and the godly,
I am the harlot and the virgin,
I am the liberated and the man of time,
I am the the indestructible and the destructible,
I am the renunciation and the proud possessor.
I am all
few know me.
I am neither This nor That,
I am neither detached nor attached,
I am neither heaven nor hell -- few know me --
I am neither philosophies nor creeds,
I am neither the Guru nor the disciple.
O friend,
I contain all.
I am clear as the mountain stream,
Simple as the new spring leaf.
Happy are they
That meet with me.
| joy |
I walked on a path through the jungle
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
I walked on a path through the jungle
Which an elephant had made,
And about me lay a tangle of wilderness.
The voice of desolation fills the distant plain.
And the city is noisy with the bells of a tall temple.
Beyond the jungle are the great mountains,
Calm and clear.
In the fear of Life
The temptation of sorrow is created.
Cut down the jungle -- not one mere tree,
For Truth is attained
By putting aside all that you have sown.
And now I walk with the elephant. | joy |
I have been a wanderer long (from The Search)
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
I have been a wanderer long
In this world of transient things.
I have known the passing pleasures thereof.
As the rainbow is beautiful
But soon vanishes into nothingness,
So have I known,
From the very foundation of the world,
The passing away of all things
Beautiful, joyous and pleasurable.
As the moon is full and serene,
In the day of harvest
So am I
In the day of my Liberation
Simple as the tender leaf am I
For in me are many winters and many springs.
As the dew drop is of the sea,
So am I born
In the ocean of my Liberation
As the mysterious river
Enters the open seas,
So have I entered
Into the world of Liberation
This is the end I have known. | joy |
I have no name (from The Song of Life)
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
I have no shelter;
I am as the wandering waters.
I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;
Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.
I have no sacred books;
Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.
I am not in the incense
Mounting on the high altars,
Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.
I am neither in the graven image,
Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.
I am not bound by theories,
Nor corrupted by beliefs.
I am not held in the bondage of religions,
Nor in the pious agony of their priests.
I am not entrapped by philosophies,
Nor held in the power of their sects.
I am neither low nor high,
I am the worshipper and the worshipped.
I am free.
My song is the song of the river
Calling for the open seas,
Wandering, wandering,
I am Life.
I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
| peace |
Winter
It smelt of new rains and of tender
Shoots of plants- and its warmth was the warmth
Of earth groping for roots… even my
Soul, I thought, must send its roots somewhere
And, I loved his body without shame,
On winter evenings as cold winds
Chuckled against the white window-panes. | love |
Words
All round me are words, and words and words,
They grow on me like leaves, they never
Seem to stop their slow growing
From within... But I tell my self, words
Are a nuisance, beware of them, they
Can be so many things, a
Chasm where running feet must pause, to
Look, a sea with paralyzing waves,
A blast of burning air or,
A knife most willing to cut your best
Friend's throat... Words are a nuisance, but.
They grow on me like leaves ona tree,
They never seem to stop their coming,
From a silence, somewhere deep within...
| sad |
A Losing Battle
How can my love hold him when the other
Flaunts a gaudy lust and is lioness
To his beast? Men are worthless, to trap them
Use the cheapest bait of all, but never
Love, which in a woman must mean tears
And a silence in the blood.
| sad |
An Introduction
I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don't write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.
It is half English, halfIndian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don't
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
WhenI asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door, He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.
I shrank Pitifully.
Then … I wore a shirt and my
Brother's trousers, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook,
Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don't play pretending games.
Don't play at schizophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don't cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love … I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants. a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me . . . the oceans' tireless
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I
In this world, he is tightly packed like the
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
| love |
Annette
Annette,
At the dresser.
Pale fingers over mirror-fields
Reaping
That wheat brown hair.
Beauty
Falling as chaff in old mirrors,
While calenders
In all
The cities turn….
| joy |
Forest Fire
Of late I have begun to feel a hunger
To take in with greed, like a forest fire that
Consumes and with each killing gains a wilder,
Brighter charm, all that comes my way. Bald child in
Open pram, you think I only look, and you
Too, slim lovers behind the tree and you, old
Man with paper in your hand and sunlight in
Your hair... My eyes lick at you like flames, my nerves
Consume ; and, when I finish with you, in the
Pram, near the tree and, on the park bench, I spit
Out small heaps of ash, nothing else. But in me
The sights and smells and sounds shall thrive and go on
And on and on. In me shall sleep the baby
That sat in prams and sleep and wake and smile its
Toothless smile. In me shall walk the lovers hand
In hand and in me, where else, the old shall sit
And feel the touch of sun. In me, the street-lamps
Shall glimmer, the cabaret girls cavort, the
Wedding drums resound, the eunuchs swirl coloured
Skirts and sing sad songs of love, the wounded moan,
And in me the dying mother with hopeful
Eyes shall gaze around, seeking her child, now grown
And gone away to other towns, other arms."
| sad |
In Love
O what does the burning mouth
Of sun, burning in today's,
Sky, remind me….oh, yes, his
Mouth, and….his limbs like pale and
Carnivorous plants reaching
out for me, and the sad lie
of my unending lust.
Where is room, excuse or even
Need for love, for, isn't each
Embrace a complete thing a finished
Jigsaw, when mouth on mouth, i lie,
Ignoring my poor moody mind
While pleasure, with deliberate gaeity
Trumpets harshly into the silence of
the room… At noon
I watch the sleek crows flying
Like poison on wings-and at
Night, from behind the Burdwan
Road, the corpse-bearers cry ‘Bol,
Hari Bol' , a strange lacing
For moonless nights, while I walk
The verandah sleepless, a
Million questions awake in
Me, and all about him, and
This skin-communicated
Thing that I dare not yet in
His presence call our love.
| love |
Krishna
Your body is my prison, Krishna,
I cannot see beyond it.
Your darkness blinds me,
Your love words shut out the wise world's din.
| love |
Love
Until I found you,
I wrote verse, drew pictures,
And, went out with friends
For walks…
Now that I love you,
Curled like an old mongrel
My life lies, content,
In you….
| love |
My Grandmother's House
There is a house now far away where once
I received love……. That woman died,
The house withdrew into silence, snakes moved
Among books, I was then too young
To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon
How often I think of going
There, to peer through blind eyes of windows or
Just listen to the frozen air,
Or in wild despair, pick an armful of
Darkness to bring it here to lie
Behind my bedroom door like a brooding
Dog…you cannot believe, darling,
Can you, that I lived in such a house and
Was proud, and loved…. I who have lost
My way and beg now at strangers' doors to
Receive love, at least in small change?
| sad |
Punishment in Kindergarten
Today the world is a little more my own.
No need to remember the pain
A blue-frocked woman caused, throwing
Words at me like pots and pans, to drain
That honey-coloured day of peace.
‘Why don't you join the others, what
A peculiar child you are! '
On the lawn, in clusters, sat my
schoolmates sipping
Sugarcane, they turned and laughed;
Children are funny things, they laugh
In mirth at others' tears, I buried
My face in the sun-warmed hedge
And smelt the flowers and the pain.
The words are muffled now, the laughing
Faces only a blur. The years have
Sped along, stopping briefly
At beloved halts and moving
Sadly on. My mind has found
An adult peace. No need to remember
That picnic day when I lay hidden
By a hedge, watching the steel-white sun
Standing lonely in the sky.
| sad |
Relationship
This love older than I by myriad
Saddened centuries was once a prayer
In his bones that made them grow in years of
Adolescence to this favored height; yes,
It was my desire that made him male
And beautiful, so that when at last we
Met, to believe that once I knew not his
Form, his quiet touch, or the blind kindness
Of his lips was hard indeed. Betray me?
Yes, he can, but never physically
Only with words that curl their limbs at
Touch of air and die with metallic sighs.
Why care I for their quick sterile sting, while
My body's wisdom tells and tells again
That I shall find my rest, my sleep, my peace
And even death nowhere else but here in
My betrayer's arms...
| sad |
Summer in Calcutta
What is this drink but
The April sun, squeezed
Like an orange in
My glass? I sip the
Fire, I drink and drink
Again, I am drunk
Yes, but on the gold
of suns, What noble
venom now flows through
my veins and fills my
mind with unhurried
laughter? My worries
doze. Wee bubblesring
my glass, like a brides
nervous smile, and meet
my lips. Dear, forgive
this moments lull in
wanting you, the blur
in memory. How
brief the term of my
devotion, how brief
your reign when i with
glass in hand, drink, drink,
and drink again this
Juice of April suns.
| sad |
The Dance of the Eunuchs
It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling
Jingling... Beneath the fiery gulmohur, with
Long braids flying, dark eyes flashing, they danced and
They dance, oh, they danced till they bled... There were green
Tattoos on their cheeks, jasmines in their hair, some
Were dark and some were almost fair. Their voices
Were harsh, their songs melancholy; they sang of
Lovers dying and or children left unborn....
Some beat their drums; others beat their sorry breasts
And wailed, and writhed in vacant ecstasy. They
Were thin in limbs and dry; like half-burnt logs from
Funeral pyres, a drought and a rottenness
Were in each of them. Even the crows were so
Silent on trees, and the children wide-eyed, still;
All were watching these poor creatures' convulsions
The sky crackled then, thunder came, and lightning
And rain, a meagre rain that smelt of dust in
Attics and the urine of lizards and mice....
| sad |
The Freaks
He talks, turning a sun-stained
Cheek to me, his mouth, a dark
Cavern, where stalactites of
Uneven teeth gleam, his right
Hand on my knee, while our minds
Are willed to race towards love;
But, they only wander, tripping
Idly over puddles of
Desire. .... .Can this man with
Nimble finger-tips unleash
Nothing more alive than the
Skin's lazy hungers? Who can
Help us who have lived so long
And have failed in love? The heart,
An empty cistern, waiting
Through long hours, fills itself
With coiling snakes of silence. .....
I am a freak. It's only
To save my face, I flaunt, at
Times, a grand, flamboyant lust.
| love |
The Looking Glass
Getting a man to love you is easy
Only be honest about your wants as
Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him
So that he sees himself the stronger one
And believes it so, and you so much more
Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your
Admiration. Notice the perfection
Of his limbs, his eyes reddening under
The shower, the shy walk across the bathroom floor,
Dropping towels, and the jerky way he
Urinates. All the fond details that make
Him male and your only man. Gift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of
Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,
The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your
Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting
A man to love is easy, but living
Without him afterwards may have to be
Faced. A living without life when you move
Around, meeting strangers, with your eyes that
Gave up their search, with ears that hear only
His last voice calling out your name and your
Body which once under his touch had gleamed
Like burnished brass, now drab and destitute.
| love |
The Maggots
At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna
Loved her for the last time and left...
That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt
So dead that he asked, What is wrong,
Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said,
No, not at all, but thought, What is
It to the corpse if the maggots nip?
| sad |
The Old Playhouse
You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
Pathways of the sky. It was not to gather knowledge
Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn
What I was, and by learning, to learn to grow, but every
Lesson you gave was about yourself. You were pleased
With my body's response, its weather, its usual shallow
Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured
Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices. You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to all your
Questions I mumbled incoherent replies. The summer
Begins to pall. I remember the rudder breezes
Of the fall and the smoke from the burning leaves. Your room is
Always lit by artificial lights, your windows always
Shut. Even the air-conditioner helps so little,
All pervasive is the male scent of your breath. The cut flowers
In the vases have begun to smell of human sweat. There is
No more singing, no more dance, my mind is an old
Playhouse with all its lights put out. The strong man's technique is
Always the same, he serves his love in lethal doses,
For, love is Narcissus at the water's edge, haunted
By its own lonely face, and yet it must seek at last
An end, a pure, total freedom, it must will the mirrors
To shatter and the kind night to erase the water.
| sad |
The Rain
We left that old ungainly house
When my dog died there, after
The burial, after the rose
Flowered twice, pulling it by its
Roots and carting it with our books,
Clothes and chairs in a hurry.
We live in a new house now,
And, the roofs do not leak, but, when
It rains here, I see the rain drench
That empty house, I hear it fall
Where my puppy now lies,
Alone..
| sad |
The Stone Age
Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind,
Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment,
Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite
Dove, you build round me a shabby room,
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep,
You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And
Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink
Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood,
Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities.
When you leave, I drive my blue battered car
Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty
Noisy steps to knock at another's door.
Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch,
they watch me come
And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me
What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,
A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake
Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like
A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,
And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is
Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price....
| sad |
The Suicide
Bereft of soul
My body shall be bare.
Bereft of body
My soul shall be bare.
Which would you rather have
O kind sea?
Which is the more dead
Of the two?
I throw the bodies out,
I cannot stand their smell.
Only the souls may enter
The vortex of sea.
Only the souls know how to sing
At the vortex of the sea.
Your body shall be dead,
Poor thing,
Dead as driftwood, drifting
And drifting to the shore.
Your body shall ride the tide,
Rider, slumped dead
On white war-house.
Charging.
Your body shall bruise white
Against the coral reefs,
Your body,
Your lonely body.
I tell you, sea,
I have enough courage to die,
But not enough.
Not enough to disobey him
Who said: Do not die
And hurt me that certain way.
How easy your duties are.
How simple.
Only roar a hungry roar,
Leao forward,
And retreat.
You swing and you swing,
O sea, you play a child's game.
But,
I must pose.
I must pretend,
I must act the role
Of happy woman,
Happy wife.
I must keep the right distance
Between me and the low.
And I must keep the right distance
Between me and the high.
O sea, i am fed up
I want to be simple
I want to be loved
And
If love is not to be had,
I want to be dead, just dead
While I enter deeper,
With joy I discover
The sea's hostile cold
Is after all skin-deep.
The sea's inner chambers
Are all very warm.
There must be a sun slumbering
At the vortex of the sea.
O sea, i am happy swimming
Happy, happy, happy ...
The only movement i know well
Is certainly the swim.
It comes naturally to me.
I had a house a Malabar
And a pale-green pond.
I did all my growing there
In the bright summer months.
I swam about and floated,
And divided into the cold and green
I lay speckled green and gold
In all the hours of the sun,
Until
My grandmother cried,
Darling, you must stop this bathing now.
You are much too big to play
Naked in the pond.
Yes, the only movement i really know
Is swimming,
It comes naturally to me.
The white man who offers
To help me forget,
The white man who offers
Himself as a stiff drink,
Is for me,
To tell the truth,
Only water.
Only a pale-green pond
Glimmering in the sun.
In him I swim
All broken with longing.
In his robust blood i float
Drying off my tears.
Yet i never can forget
The only man who hurts.
The only one who seems to know
The only way to hurt.
Holding you is easy
Clutching at moving water,
I tell you, sea,
This is easy,
But to hold him for half a day
Was a difficult task.
It required drinks
To hold him down.
To make him love.
But, when he did not love,
Believe me,
All I could do was to sob like a fool.
O sea,
You generous cow,
You and I are big flops.
We are too sentimental
For our own
Good.
Lights are moving on the shore.
But I shall not return.
Sea, toss my body back
That he knew how to love.
Bereft of body
My soul shall be free.
Take in my naked soul
That he knew how to hurt.
Only the soul knows how to sing
At the vortex of the sea.
| sad |
The Sunshine Cat
They did this to her, the men who know her, the man
She loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish
And a coward, the husband who neither loved nor
Used her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band
Of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where
New hair sprouted like great-winged moths, burrowing her
Face into their smells and their young lusts to forget
To forget, oh, to forget, and, they said, each of
Them, I do not love, I cannot love, it is not
In my nature to love, but I can be kind to you.
They let her slide from pegs of sanity into
A bed made soft with tears, and she lay there weeping,
For sleep had lost its use. I shall build walls with tears,
She said, walls to shut me in. Her husband shut her
In, every morning, locked her in a room of books
With a streak of sunshine lying near the door like
A yellow cat to keep her company, but soon
Winter came, and one day while locking her in, he
Noticed that the cat of sunshine was only a
Line, a half-thin line, and in the evening when
He returned to take her out, she was a cold and
Half dead woman, now of no use at all to men.
| sad |
The Testing of the Sirens
The night, dark-cloaked like a procuress, brought
him to me, willing, light as a shadow,
speaking words of love
in some tender language I do not know ...
With the crows came the morning, and my limbs
warm of love, were once again so lonely...
At my doorstep I saw a pock-marked face,
a friendly smile and
a rolleiflex. We will go for a drive,
he said. Or go see the lakes. I have
washed my face with soap and water, brushed
my hair a dozen
times, draped myself in six yards of printed
voile. Ah... does it still show, my night of love?
You look pale, he said. Not pale, not really
pale. It's the lipstick's
anemia. Out in the street, we heard
The sirens go, and I paused in talk to
weave their wail with the sound of his mirthless
laughter. He said,
they are testing the sirens today. I am
happy. He really was lavish with words.
I am happy, just being with you.
But you . . . you love another,
I know, he said, perhaps a handsome man,
a young and handsome man. Not young,
not handsome, I thought, just a filthy snob.
It's a one-sided love,
I said. What can I do for yoou? I smiled
A smile is such a detached thing, I wear
it like a flower. Near the lake, a pregnant
girl bared her dusky
breasts and washed them sullenly. On the old
cannon-stand, crows bickered over a piece
of lizard-meat and the white sun was there
and everywhere . . .
I want your photo, lying-down,
nineteen-thirty-four guns, he said,
against those rusty nineteen-thirty-four guns,
will you ? Sure. Just arrange my limbs and tell
Me when to smile. I
shut my eyes, but inside eye-lids, there was
no more night, no more love, or peace, only
the white, white sun burning, burning, burning...
Ah, why does love come to me like pain
again and again and again?
| sad |
As the man and the woman in me
by Lalan
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
Original Language Bengali
As the man and the woman in me
Unite in love,
The brilliance of beauty
Balanced on the bi-petalled
Lotus bloom in me
Dazzles my eyes.
The rays
Outshine the moon
And the jewels
Glowing on the hoods of snakes.
My skin and bone
Are turned to gold.
I am the reservoir of love,
Alive as the waves.
A single drop of water
Has grown into a sea,
Unnavigable... | love |
Could I ever forget him
by Lalan
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
Original Language Bengali
Could I ever forget him
since I delivered my heart
at his feet?
His beauty enchants my eyes
round the compass
wherever I steer myself.
Though all call him black,
He is not black.
He is the glow of the moon--
the black moon,
and there is no other moon to equal him....
| love |
He talks to me
by Lalan
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
Original Language Bengali
He talks to me
But he would not let me see him.
He moves
Close to my hands
But away from my reach.
I explore
The sky and the earth
Searching him,
Circling round my error
Of not knowing me:
Who am I
And who is he? | sad |
How the days drag
by Lalan
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
Original Language Bengali
How the days drag
before union with the man of my heart!
Round the hours
of the day and night
as the rain-bird, chataka,
watches the clouds,
I gaze at the black-moon
hoping to surrender myself
at his feet--in vain.
Like lightning
flashing through the clouds
and hiding in the clouds
never to be found again,
I saw his beauty
flashing through my dreams
and I lost Krishna. | sad |
The moon is encircled by moons
by Lalan
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
Original Language Bengali
The moon is encircled by moons.
How can I hold it
In my hands?
The unseizable moon,
Glowing in the brilliance
Of a million moons,
Rocks my head
In a lunar carnival....
Moon fruits adorn
The tree of the moon,
Flashing,
Luminously flashing.
I try to see
But my eyes cannot bear;
The rays of beauty
Dazzle them.
| joy |
A breathless counsel
curiosity will catch you dear for you are a writer and it is your license to startle
the world with a hundred thousand words instead of a dazzling smile or those
occasional winks and i don’t want to probe for after all you are renouncing all the
time and i don’t want to stop you racing against life but i have been there and i
have returned and i know what happens when it takes hold of a woman yes i
know what happens then but i will not tell you the answers i have sealed my lips i
have learnt how not to say what i must be saying somehow i don’t want to be
fledging you in security for what happens with all my parenting will only be a
compromise darling child instead i let you free i want you to ask the questions i
want you to prick and not polish your wounds i will let you to be hurt in the face
of the world i want you to learn more than what you want to learn sometimes i
feel i want you to get hurt badly hurt and bleed before the world and then i shall
sit back and feel my work is done for once you have known what pain is then you
shall know how to preserve the fringes of happiness i want you to be alone in the
ravenous world where you never know what happens next just so that you will
no longer find routine to be so despicable and amidst that pervading fuzziness
you shall long for an anchor for all your dreams only realizing much later that
you are your safety you are your ultimate but till then you might screech and
scream but when you retain your temperament you will find that life will always
lie waiting like an hungry beast and at each turn you take i wish you learn the
greater horrors and now i confess darling i want you hurt because i want to
watch you fight and fight and fight i want you to pull together those moonbeams
of hope i want you to throb precariously i want you to be living on the edge i
want you to learn the thousand one ways in which you can melt the boundaries
of saturation called death and the emptiness of life and the fidgetiness of what
might be called love i want you to lose i want you to win but some day i want you
to be free
| love |
Apologies for living on
i am living on
because providing apologies is easy
once—
i was making choices
with insanely safe ideas of
fleeing-madly-and-flying-away
i was a helpless girl
against the brutal world of
bottom-patting-and-breast-pinching
i was craving for security
the kind i had only known while
aimlessly-afloat-and-speculating-in-the-womb
now—
i am locked away
a terrified princess waiting
for-death-and-not-any-brave-prince
i don’t dream or think
i just remember and wince
at-voices-of-the-past-smirking-in-sarcasm
once—
i ran away in the darkness
nothing beaconed me more than the
prospect-of-solitude-and-the-caress-of-a-million-stars
i ran into the arms of the ravishing night
nothing pulled me back: not even the memories
of-love-i-had-once-known-&-stolen-kisses-savoured-for-so-long.
i ran until terror stopped my tracks
for, trembling i turned and saw that the moon was
another-immodest-ogler-and-lecherous-stalker.
| sad |
Aftermath
the next morning in school during your
english exam you take permission to go to
the toilet where you throw up all the white
and creamy breakfast milk. only it tastes
sour and looks like bits of maggoty curd.
weeks later, you get to know two things
one of which will change your life for ever.
first, you scored the highest in the english
exam. second, you became a gossip item.
you still don’t know what affects you more.
because of your boldness and brashness
and bunking classes your ulcerated vomit
is taken for morning sickness. the sourness
extends when you hear hushed whispers
passing around. girls younger than you,
point at you and speak such banal secrets.
in staff-rooms, and in ungainly corridors
teachers chatter of your child, so vividly
imagined in the backdrop of your really
empty womb. slander is a slaughterhouse.
even best-friends seek answers as the
rumours inflame. your anger is mistaken
to be toward a crude imagined lover who
disowned you. you know the nauseous
truth of your thighs: you are virgin. But
evidence will not be revenge, for, so many
smoky eyes implore you to supplicate, to
admit alleged truths. impeaching faces lay
down rules: don’t shout or scream, but
swallow the shame. next, confess the sin.
sin yes they will shred your innocent life to
that yes you may fume or froth or boil or
simmer yes you are their staple soup they
need you just this way yes your fury takes
its toll annihilating you not them yes anger
and hatred seethe in your untamed tresses
yes you know how gossip chokes even the
tethered dreams yes something breaks in
you yes dear yes you start the brute search
for sleeping pills and chaste suicide ideas.
| sad |
Composition
At that brief time
When you wait
For the audacious cane
To strike your skin,
And the rest of you is flinching
And cringing, with part shame,
And part pain,
Poetry dictates itself
In your mind. Short lines
Rip through, like bullets
From a machine gun.
The poem comes with the
Freshness of a life set free,
Whistling its way,
Painfully, like wind searing
Through the palm fronds.
Then,
The cane thrashes
Your skin, dancing cruelly
And bouncing in wooden joy.
Before you scream,
Or shake, the poetry stops.
And the Muse, is tentatively,
Laid to rest, much before the
Composition is
Complete.
| sad |
An angel meeting me
and may be we will
almost fall in love. . .
I will look into his eyes,
and he into mine—
my one single eye,
(the unfortunate other
blinded by a disciplinizing slap)
and we will agree, adjust
that Love can be Blind.
And he, healthy boy
well-fed, white with his rosy cheeks,
will wonder about me,
pity my bony body, those thin ribs
and worry
and feel my twisted ears
and the scars on my hands,
(reminders of the flirtation
of my skin and a cruel cane)
and perhaps lift my skirt. . .
Before he learns the greater horrors,
I owe him the truth of me—
So, I will say to him:
“I went to school”.
| sad |
Amnesia, selective
When memory decides
To no longer bear the burdens—
Of pain, or even plain indifference
She has her winsome wicked ways.
Some day, years later,
Life requires you to unearth
Some event long past and you
Set about browsing your brain
Like a desk-full of office files and then—
Come across a resounding emptiness.
Memories drizzle-fragile
Are not to be found. What
Greets you instead, through
Those yellowing sheets of typed matter is
The blank and ugly blotches of dried whitener
So carefully applied, then. It has a fading smell of
Chalk and chlorine: a blend, like memory, that works at
Your throat. You try to scratch it and the faintest hopes are
Betrayed as the caked pieces of the whitener crumble,
Displaying nothing, but toe curling holes where crummy paper and ink once contained you.
| sad |
Sage in the cubicle
Even your tongue,
Craves for the taste of tears. . .
And you are crying again.
Misery is (you always believe) the only genuine
Emotion and sadness, the way of the real world.
She wouldn’t have any of it.
Sage in the cubicle, healer of sorts.
Three years your junior. She makes soul-talk
Sound as prosaic as aeronautical engineering.
At the end,
Her warning:
‘Stop this right now.’
What will you say of your feeling
Living with a sister who terrorizes
Even manic depressions out of your mind?
| sad |
Songs of summer
“I am happy, life is good.”
Heard at the end of a therapy class. . .
The heavy-duty brainwashing and you
Remember your crores stacked away. . .
Your Harvard airs helps in large doses
Soon, the colors peel away and there is nothing
To do than wrestle with your yearnings.
“I would like to make love.”
Wanna fuck? It is easier saying it this way
For something that you paid for in cash
And cheques and credit cards.
Forget the lesser action, the lack of poetry—
What mattered was how you let go
Of your hate and heat and hunger
But never had the courage to talk
To her of love or loneliness. . .
“You are trespassing on my territory”
You guarded it with LoCs and walls
And barbed wire fences where hatred
Danced like high-voltage electricity. . .
You killed creatures and cleared forests
And wiped away the darker people
And those of dreamy tongues with
Your agenda of a war-a-week, the
Worlds-to-win and vengeance-to-wreak. . .
Your Mushroom clouds and wmds and
Poverty drafts and armchair chivalry and
A collective manhood of nuclear warheads
That explode and penetrate. . .
“She’s mine.”
To make her yours and yours alone,
You pushed her deeper into harems
Where she could see the sunlight
Only from the lattice windows.
Domesticated into drudgery she was just
Another territory, worn out by wars. A slave
Who maintained your numbers.
“Let’s make love.”
~all that you thought~
What’s taking her so long to undress?
Quick! Sooner!
~all that you said~
I m gonna fuck till ya faint. . .
“Oh how nice to have made love.”
~breathless~ Iminahurry. Cyasoon.~panting~
Here are the words, again—
I am happy. Life is good / I would love to make love.
You are trespassing on my territory/ She’s mine.
Let’s make love/ Oh how nice to have made love.
On sunny green fields these are the only
Six sentences the male of a grasshopper can ever say.
But what have we done with words?
| joy |
Marijuana murdered him
Noon
A gray rainy day—
On a road less traveled the patrol tracked down much:
Him (him is now an it, a crumpled cruel corpse for women
To beat their breasts about); the wreckage (four black wheels
That speak of despair and a mangled red car-body awash yet
Soiled and the cold apparitions of smoked glass and steel);
The crime record—
He stole at home he found no work he pimped his sis he
Mortgaged his mom he raped a girl (the myth reads so: like
A crow calling its kindred he invited the last of his friends to
Join the feast, the fest, yes the plunder between her thighs)
He stabbed his professor dad he lived on air and alcohol
And insulin and morphine—but it was the marijuana that
Murdered him as he screamed at the vengeful rain that
Teased away his nirvana, the excuse of an existence. . .
No pair of exacting eyes to see the trees drive into a rage into
His car that once swallowed whole black roads but for the
God on his dashboard temple who had since returned to
Formlessness, to a hundred and eight tiny crystals that held
Psychedelic rainbows that outshone all the trapped sun. . .
| sad |
Why do the heroes die?
Unlike in fairy tales, young heroes die.
All the dazzling princes, strong men of might,
Robinhoods and Messiahs that never lie
Are done to death, Evil winning the fight.
Heroes are bled; not just deprived of life
God turns in his throne, the dead in cold graves
And perhaps death ends the lifetimes of strife.
Is slaughter the prize for not being slaves?
Brave men encounter blows, fight their case,
Leave forsaking the world they came to mend.
‘Youth may arise and fill this vacant space’
One faint hope; heroes reach the destined end.
Heroes get their Halos. Applause. Praise.
All glories shine brighter with sacrifice.
| courage |
Work is worship, or so they said. . .
Six thirty in the a.m.
And you still have not
Gone to bed.
It is three days
Since you have
Combed your hair.
It is a week
Since you had a bath.
And six weeks
Since your dog had hers.
It is three months
Since you popped
The baby pink multi-vitamins.
It is half a year
Since you met your only best friend.
Woe to your scraggyscornfullistless world
Where the moonlit sky exists only in the grand
Lullabies that one of your grandmothers sang.
| sad |
Meeting the prophetess
Leave your books behind.
Since memory,
Like knowledge, is a traitor,
Erase every hoarding of your horrible past.
At last, when you enter her world
Of fraying edges and falling angels
Don’t barter words where touch will do and be the truth.
For once allow her silence to sear, strip your life-layers
Because she who knows the truth will not know the tale.
| joy |
The flight of birds
“a poem should be wordless
as the flight of birds.”
—Archibald Macleish, Ars Poetica.
birds don’t sing in their flight
for them flying is a muse
they compose mid-air
weave agnostic verse
sneering haughtily at our absurdity
as they float over our meaningless mosques and churches
and those patrolled international borders
and other disputed sites
where the guns go bang bang bang all the time
they swing over there losing their birdegos
(ego is difficult to retain in mid-flight)
wondering about and watching men plucking out
and quashing the lives of other men and women and
poor helpless children and they
shed a birdtear or two from there
a birdtear that is lost midway due to heat of some explosion
down below some crazy fanatical bomb detonating
killing instantly the people and the city and the forests
and even the pitiable babybirds who are yet to learn to fly
they contemplate of writing poems
about a bird’s egg charring
before even being boiled and scratch their beaks
unsure if this is a metaphor or simile or other poetic device
o the birds have lots and lots and lots to write about
o their writings will never be banned
they borrow freedom
to write poems in the sky
they come back and
pass it on to us
we take the song only
brutally
but at least we take the song
to take the poem
to unscramble the words from the song and to put it back again
as song so spontaneously that it remains the poem and the song
to remember forever this refrain whose melody haunts us
and to hum that refrain which preserves our sanity
perhaps we need to fly
a trifle aimlessly like birds
or because we are humans
six-sensed creatures with massive egos
and massive superegos and massive egos on the ego
and because of possessing gray matter
what doctors call medulla oblongata
we need to feel with our red hearts
than think with some unlocatable mind
we need to look deeper. . .
into ourselves, into eyes
we need to lose ourselves
then, and only then
the poems will come
silent
wordless
as the flight of birds
| joy |
Blackboard poems
S P A C E
is a problem unlike your never-ending
paper or the maddening blankness of
your word processor where you can go on
and on in anguish or insanity or boredom
on one-hundred-and-seven degree Fahrenheit afternoons.
(To write the next lines you need to take
the green&goldbrown duster to rub off these eight)
Colour is another confusion you want
to wish away. At sixteen you wouldn’t write
OneSingleWord unless it was forty percent
gray letters on a plum background and your
monitor looked like a high class youknowwho.
The font then was Footlight MT Light, 13 pt.
Now, at twenty one, it is Verdana, eight point.
(I have erased again)
NOTHING SEDUCES LIKE YOUR OWN HANDWRITING.
THE WHITE CHALK DANCING ACROSS GLASS GREEN.
Creepers on W’s & R’s, hats on S, hearts on I’s & J’s.
(I have erased again)
I don’t grudge the colours too. Instead of two hundred
and fifty six fantasies there is the catholic bridal white.
Sometimes, there is yellow, blue, green, purple, red and
orange and the opportunity of giving them names—
Flaky Fullmoon. Bleached & Faded Captain Haddock Suit.
Temple-tank Algae. Crushed Lilac Under Flashlight.
Sherbet Stain. Sawdust Chillidust Cream.
(I have erased again)
There is considerable exertion (let me hazard a guess:
writing takes two hundred calories per hour, erasing
with the duster five hundred, and walking across must
be say, around eighty). Then, there is chalk-dust allergy
that compels me to sneeze. And the chemical after-effect
that spoils the moody brown skin of any glowing goddess.
And the unbearable sounds
of chalk squeak. . .
(I have erased again.
The fifth time now.)
But, a poet loves
writing blackboard poems.
(So easy, to imagine, an audience)
Yet, how much she dreads
Impermanence. . .
| joy |
Returning home
And you see the two-crows-for-joy-pass that are sitting on
overhead cables and the evening moon,
a mere silvery slice against fluffy translucent sky.
And the remains of your school where you spent your twelve
longest years and lived through everything.
And the bus-stand you had to draw for your art-class in yellow
ochre or asphalt grey and the emptiness that now occupies the
place where a tiny café once stood.
And the tree where they fed you lunch before you learnt to walk
back home. And I thought of my parents.
Brilliant people talking of the intricacies of their life and the corruption of
morals and the bygone days and hunger in their childhood and their deaddear-
departed parents as if to teach you what to talk to your children.
(And you are their child,
so you speak their lines.)
Still returning home,
And there are rusty mammoth girders that outline the sky like
the derelicts of lost dreams and crossed hopes.
And girls so flimsy pretty yet unsafe in the little worlds of lip
gloss and love affairs that you could have smoked them into
oblivion.
And the dry decaying dead leaves crushed with varying noises
and carrying a spent smell that clings to your hair.
And the shy forest noises that violate your fixation over sight
and sound and smell and touch yes touch.
And I thought of my lover.
A primitive man who would invade
your aloneness on insomniac nights
and challenge your assumptions of
love and your sophistications and fill
your ears with the four letter words of
his ancient language that have begun
to sound to you like earth songs to
which your body awakens.
(And you are his love,
so you listen to his lines.)
On the way home, the small
lessons you learn of life. . .
Love, or the promise of love,
its lack of choice.
This large world.
And its littleness.
| joy |
Cinquains
Morning Song
Wet pink
And dusty grey
The sky begins to blush.
Some sleepy careless charm welcomes
Daybreak.
Even Song
Azure
And pink gold hues
The smug sky at twilight
A final flush of fulfilment
Night falls.
| joy |
How they prostitute a poem
It is uniquely easy
For some to sell
Ideals because
Business of absent
Goods is essentially
A sacrosanct but mostly
A flimsy transaction.
Some learn, early on,
To prostitute their verse.
So, in all the waking hours
They scavenge for a simple simile
That matches requirements, fulfills needs.
They barter reality
And every romance
To a blurred triplicate
Carbon-copy World of Hard
Cash and Price Tags and Brand Names.
In this brothel
Of stilled hope and
Stagnated stories, poems
Are born virgin and endowed
With voluptuous figures of firm,
Full breasts and wide hips where men
Prefer to plant their pastime dreams,
Or conceive their seed,
Or merely spite themselves,
Or dabble at domination.
But, the poem, with this
Bogus existence becomes
An adept, untiring prostitute.
Taken
On a starry night,
The poem opens
(dry and drab and dreary:
lacking love and life) like
The paid-for parting
Of the thighs.
| anger |
Sun in the mouth
And the truth scorches and singes
the pink open flesh of your mouth
with its pungent yellow taste, so,
speaking the truth is not so easy
with just one tongue, anyway.
Seeing might have been closest
to truth and as Plotinus said
the eye would not be able to see
the sun if it was itself not sun
and so seeing was understanding.
The Egyptians called the eye
with the circle of the iris
with the pupil in the centre
as the sun in the mouth
and that was their truth.
Cyclops must have had little
to see in this vast world and
deprived of the whole truth
and that was his loss, his tragedy.
Even Argus with all his eyes
couldn’t escape in the end.
How much truth, how many eyes
of how many senses would it take
to tell the truth to the lord of the third-eye?
A king of a Tamil temple city
raged mad to know the truth
of the scent of a woman’s hair.
Since money bought truth
he made ready, a thousand gold coins.
And a poor poet still married to faith
prayed on to Shiva, the lord of struggling
survivors, lord of births and lives and
deaths, lord of poor poets who gave him
a poem to be sung at the king’s court.
A savant there picked a mistake like
peeling the scab of a healed wound
and said that the poem was wrong.
He said that any woman’s hair
did not have a natural scent.
The lord of dances and grey ash
and cremation grounds came down
to challenge this stubborn man who
extended his truth, even if the woman
was the consort of the lord.
He would not budge even if the lord
threatened to open his third eye,
the eye in the forehead which would
reduce him to bone-white ashes
as light as the wispiest clouds.
The court cowered in fright. . .
But in arrogance the savant said
a mistake is a mistake
even if it was the lord
of the forehead-eye.
O’ saint-bard and master of many wily words
What do you know of truth or love,
or the scent of a woman’s hair?
On the nights of naked sky and
a fragile quarter moon, my lord,
he of the deep blue throat,
he of the rivers in his hair,
he of the third-eye, comes to me.
Before he tears the blankness
of my womb, before he traces
the length of my spine, the curve
of my thighs, before he strokes
my cheeks, he buries his head
in the thousand and one nights
of my long tresses and he says
it smells like the wind-lost voices
of his childhood summers.
| joy |