Selected Poems Page 13
But the dance of their withered wraiths in the barren night, so come, bees.
I hear the song of the closing year like a flute in the rustling leaves,
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So smear your wings with pollen’s chronicle before its fragrance flees.
Take all you can from flowers that summer heat will strew;
Cram the old year’s honey into the hives of the new.
Come, come; do not delay, new year bees –
Look what a wealth of parting gifts has been laid on the year as she leaves.
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The fierce, destructive heat of Baiśākh will quickly seize
The dolan-capā buds that tremble now in the Caitra breeze.
Finish all that they have to give, let nothing stay;
As the season ends let everything go in an orgy of giving away.
Come, thieves of hidden honey; come now, bees -
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The year has chosen to marry death and wants to give all as she leaves.
Sea-maiden
Wet with sea-water, with loose dripping hair
You sat on the rock shore.
Your flowing yellow skirt
Rolled and curved round your feet.
5
The tender dawn
Wrote in glistening gold on your naked breasts and unadorned skin.
With a makara-crested crown on my brow,
Holding in my right hand bow and arrow
I stood majestically
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And said, ‘I have come from a far country.’
Starting from your stone seat in alarm,
You cried, ‘Why have you come?’
I said, ‘Do not be afraid:
I have come to pick pūjā-offerings in your flowering wood.’
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You came with me, smiling your favour;
We picked jasmine and jātī and cāpā-flower.
We dressed a basket with flowers; we sat together
And jointly worshipped dancing Śiva.
Dawn-mist vanished; the light that flooded the sky
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Showed Pārvatī smiling as she caught her husband’s eye.
When over the mountains appeared the evening star,
You sat alone indoors.
Blue silk girdled your waist; on your head, a mālatī-chaplet;
Round each of your wrists a bracelet.
25 I played my flute as I drew near;
‘I come as your guest,’ I said at your door.
You lit your lamp in dread and alarm,
Stared at me, said, ‘Why have you come?’
I said, ‘Do not fear me:
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I have come to dress you in my finery.’
You smiled; I placed
A necklace of golden crescents across your breast.
I circled your bound-up hair with my own
Makara-crown.
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Your companions lit lamps and marvelled;
The jewels on your body sparkled.
You sweetened and disturbed the spring night;
Your anklets jingled as you danced to my beat.
The full moon smiled; śiva and Pārvatī,
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Light and shade, played in the waters of the sea.
I did not notice the ending of the day;
I found myself floating again in my boat on a twilit sea.
Suddenly the wind was against me:
Waves reared, a storm blew up fiercely.
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Salt-water filled my boat,
And it sank with its cargo of jewels in the dark night.
Again but broken in fortune I came to wait at your door,
In stained rags, no splendour.
Opening the door of the Śiva temple I saw
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That our basket of flowers still lay there.
I saw, lit by the restless festivity
Of the surging mêlée
Of moonlight dancing in the sea,
My patterns still painted on your meek lowered brow,
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My necklace still on your breast.
Unobserved I saw, expressed
In your gestures and form,
The pitch and beats of my drum;
In your limbs the swing
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Of my tālas delighting, singing, oscillating.
Hear my prayer, beautiful maiden;
Come before me with your lamp again.
This time I am no longer makara-crowned;
I no longer have bow and arrow in my hand;
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Neither have I brought a basket for the gathering of flowers
In your wood by the sea where the south wind blows.
My vīnā is all I have with me.
Look at me, see whether you recognize me.
Question
God, again and again through the ages you have sent messengers
To this pitiless world:
They have said, ‘Forgive everyone’, they have said, ‘Love one another –
Rid your hearts of evil.’
5
They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days
We turn them away with hollow greetings, from outside the doors of our houses.
And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,
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No hope of redress.
I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,
In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail.
My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute:
Black moonless night
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Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this is why,
With tears in my eyes, I ask:
Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your light,
Can it be that you have forgiven them? Can it be that you love them?
Flute-music
Kinu the milkman’s alley.
A ground-floor room in a two-storeyed house,
Slap on the road, windows barred.
Decaying walls, crumbling to dust in places
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Or stained with damp.
Stuck on the door,
A picture of Gaeśa, Bringer of Success,
From the end of a bale of cloth.
Another creature apart from me lives in my room
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For the same rent:
A lizard.
There’s one difference between him and me:
He doesn’t go hungry.
I get twenty-five rupees a month
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As junior clerk in a trading office.
I’m fed at the Dattas’ house
For coaching their boy.
At dusk I go to Sealdah station,
Spend the evening there
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To save the cost of light.
Engines chuffing,
Whistles shrieking,
Passengers scurrying,
Coolies shouting.
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I stay till half past ten,
Then back to my dark, silent, lonely room.
A village on the Dhaleśvarī river, that’s where my aunt’s people live.
Her brother-in-law’s daughter –
She was due to marry my unfortunate self, everything was fixed.
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The moment was indeed auspicious for her, no doubt of that –
For I ran away.
The girl was saved from me,
And I from her.
She did not come to this room, but she’s in and out of my mind all the time:
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Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.
Pouring rain.
My tram costs go up,
But often as not my pay gets cut for lateness.
Along the alley
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Mango skins and stones, jack-fruit pulp,
Fish-gills, dead kittens
And God knows what other rubbish
Pile up and rot.
My umbrella is like my depleted pay –
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Full of holes.
My sopping office clothes ooze
Like a pious Vaiava.
Monsoon darkness
Sticks in my damp room
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Like an animal caught in a trap,
Lifeless and numb.
Day and night I feel strapped bodily
On to a half-dead world.
At the corner of the alley lives Kāntabābu –
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Long hair carefully parted,
Large eyes,
Cultivated tastes.
He fancies himself on the cornet:
The sound of it comes in gusts
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On the foul breeze of the alley –
Sometimes in the middle of the night,
Sometimes in the early morning twilight,
Sometimes in the afternoon
When sun and shadows glitter.
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Suddenly this evening
He starts to play runs in Sindhu-Bārōyā rāg,
And the whole sky rings
With eternal pangs of separation.
At once the alley is a lie
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False and vile as the ravings of a drunkard,
And I feel that nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk
From the Emperor Akbar.
Torn umbrella and royal parasol merge,
Rise on the sad music of a flute
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Towards one heaven.
The music is true
Where, in the everlasting twilight-hour of my wedding,
The Dhalesvarī river flows,
Its banks deeply shaded by tamāl-trees,
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And she who waits in the courtyard
Is dressed in a Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.
Unyielding
When I called you in your garden
Mango blooms were rich in fragrance –
Why did you remain so distant,
Keep your door so tightly fastened?
5
Blossoms grew to ripe fruit-clusters –
You rejected my cupped handfuls,
Closed your eyes to perfectness.
In the fierce harsh storms of Baiśākh
Golden ripened fruit fell tumbling –
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‘Dust,’ I said, ‘defiles such offerings:
Let your hands be heaven to them.’
Still you showed no friendliness.
Lampless were your doors at evening,
Pitch-black as I played my vīnā.
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How the starlight twanged my heartstrings!
How I set my vīnā dancing!
You showed no responsiveness.
Sad birds twittered sleeplessly,
Calling, calling lost companions.
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Gone the right time for our union –
Low the moon while still you brooded,
Sunk in lonely pensiveness.
Who can understand another!
Heart cannot restrain its passion.
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I had hoped that some remaining
Tear-soaked memories would sway you,
Stir your feet to lightsomeness.
Moon fell at the feet of morning,
Loosened from night’s fading necklace.
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While you slept, O did my vīnā
Lull you with its heartache? Did you
Dream at least of happiness?
Earth
Accept my homage, Earth, as I make my last obeisance of the day,
Bowed at the altar of the setting sun.
You are mighty, and knowable only by the mighty;
You counterpoise charm and severity;
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Compounded of male and female
You sway human life with unbearable conflict.
The cup that your right hand fills with nectar
Is smashed by your left;
Your playground rings with your mocking laughter.
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You make heroism hard to attain;
You make excellence costly;
You are not merciful to those who deserve mercy.
Ceaseless warfare is hidden in your plants:
Their crops and fruits are victory-wreaths won from struggle.
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Land and sea are your cruel battlefields -
Life proclaims its triumph in the face of death.
Civilization rests its foundation upon your cruelty:
Ruin is the penalty exacted for any shortcoming.
In the first chapter of your history Demons were supreme –
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Harsh, barbaric, brutish;
Their clumsy thick fingers lacked art;
With clubs and mallets in hand they rioted over sea and mountain.
Their fire and smoke churned sky into nightmare;
They controlled the inanimate world;
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They had blind hatred of Life.
Gods came next; by their spells they subdued the Demons –
The insolence of Matter was crushed.
Mother Earth spread out her green mantle;
On the eastern peaks stood Dawn;
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On the western sea-shore Evening descended,
Dispensing peace from her chalice.
The shackled Demons were humbled;
But primal barbarity has kept its grip on your history.
It can suddenly invade order with anarchy –
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From the dark recesses of your being
It can suddenly emerge like a snake.
Its madness is in your blood.
The spells of the Gods resound through sky and air and forest,
Sung solemnly day and night, high and low;
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But from regions under your surface
Sometimes half-tame Demons raise their serpent-hoods –
They goad you into wounding your own creatures,
Into ruining your own creation.
At your footstool mounted on evil as well as good
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To your vast and terrifying beauty,
I offer today my scarred life’s homage.
I touch your huge buried store of life and death
Feel it throughout my body and mind.
The corpses of numberless generations of men lie heaped in your dust:
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I too shall add a few fistfuls, the final measure of my joys and pains:
Add them to that name-absorbing, shape-absorbing, fame-absorbing
Silent pile of dust.