I Won't Let You Go (33 page)

Yes, they call me a romantic.

        And I accept it:

            I am a traveller to delight’s sacred springs.

        Love, I have indeed

    dyed the shawl that wraps me.

        When I come to your door,

             I sing dawn’s Bhairab, invoke its furor.

        I pluck the scent of spring

                   in tuberoses

             and invade your lonely room’s gentle breezes.

        Softly I read you poems

            which are rhythmic.

                  The rhythms are interspersed

        with structured statements artfully prepared.

                     When you hear such things,

                 the smile on your lips acquires a drunken tinge.

                      When I play Multan

                 on my flute,

        my inner mystery finds its melodic route.

             I place you at the centre of a sphere of fantasies, 

                 carefully peeling off its dusty sheath:

        myself I make that world.

            I trick the Creator,

picking colours and flavours from His workshop,

            nicking a touch of His magic.

       Much of that is fantasy, I know;

            much, indeed, is a shadow.

When you ask me – ‘Can this be realistic?’ –

    I say, ‘Never, for I am a romantic!’

         There it is – the realistic world;

    I know too well how to get there

         and get back.

            I pay back what I owe it –

         that’s not done in words, and I do know it –

                 I fully accept my liabilities.

There’s poverty there, and disease, and ugliness;

            women there are placed under duress.

    There I discard my shawl and don my armour,

        for jobs must be done that know no mercy whatsoever.

Let drums give us courage where we must renounce and suffer:

    never let me be an amateur realist out there.

        There let beauty walk hand in hand

            with the terrifying.

       Love came

            with such quiet steps

       I thought her a dream.

            I didn’t ask her to sit down.

When she took her leave, no sooner had she opened the door

            than I heard the sound.

        I rushed out to call her back.

By then she was a bodiless dream

            fading into the night’s dark,

     in the far path her lamp-flame

                        a reddish mirage.

When separation, I reckoned, was total,

I was walking all alone, without an aim,

Srabon clouds dark-leaning on the wood’s head,

keenest lightning cleaving apart night’s breast;

River Baruni’s liquid purr from afar. –

My mind kept saying: Impossible, it’s impossible!

On many such nights, her head against my arm,

she’d heard a poet’s own humming of kajari chants.

Trees thrilled by densest downpour’s drumming,

in flesh and spirit at one with one’s leman:

came such a night, with the same Srabon abundance. –

My mind kept saying: Impossible, it’s impossible!

On I drifted in the darkest deep of night,

the rain playing sky’s music on my veins.

A honey-whiff from a jasmine grove, wind-borne,

the tidings I used to get from chains on her braids:

it rose again, the fragrance of those flowers. –

My mind kept saying: Impossible, it’s impossible!

In a reverie, I wandered by thought’s error

to the window which had so often beckoned me.

I heard a sitar playing a musical air,

a song of mine, twined with a hint of tears.

You left the poet, but kept the poet’s honour. –

My mind kept saying: Impossible, it’s impossible!

In the noontide between sleep and wake

perhaps in a dream I saw

the sheath of my being slip

and fall in the stream

of an unknown river,

carrying with it my name, my reputation,

all of a miser’s heap,

shameful memories signed by

delicious moments.

Glories and infamies

floated away on the waves,

couldn’t be brought back.

Then did I, ego-less, argue within myself:

of all my losses

which one hurt me the most?

It wasn’t my past, with which in joys and sorrows

my days and nights had passed.

It was my future,

which I’d never had,

in which my desires,

like seeds within the earth’s womb,

had, with their sprouting hopes,

dreamt through the long night

of the light that hadn’t arrived.

When the god of death gave the command for annihilation,

men took on themselves the task of self-destruction.

Depressed, I’ve thought: why doesn’t a sudden disaster

hit this errant planet which has veered from its course,

so we all die together, in one big blazing pyre?

But then I reflect: if through suffering on suffering

sin hasn’t rotted, its seed will surely sleep

in the ashes of the holocaust, and on the breast

of a new creation

once more raise its thorns.

Silently comes the fierce night, batters down

the sapped body’s enfeebled door-bolt,

enters within, commences to ravish

life’s glorious loveliness, till the mind,

under darkness’s attack, acknowledges it’s beaten.

When the shame of that defeat, that infirmity’s ignominy

have done their worst, suddenly upon the horizon

appears the day’s banner, drawn in golden rays,

and as if from some far centre of the firmament

arises a clamour – ‘Lies! All lies!’

In the morning’s serene light I see myself

as one who has conquered suffering, on the tower

of the exhausted body’s fortress.

In creation’s vast field

the play of fireworks in the skies

with suns and stars

is on a cosmic scale.

I too came from the invisible without beginning

with a minute fire-particle to a tiny spot 

of space and time.

Now as I enter the last act, the lamp’s flame

flickers, the shadows reveal

the illusory nature of this play.

Joys and sorrows, dramatic disguises,

slowly become slack.

Hundreds of actors and actresses through the ages

have left their many-coloured costumes outside the door

of the theatre. I look and see

in the greenroom of hundreds of extinguished stars

the king of the theatre standing still, alone.

This life of mine’s been nurtured by a river.

In its arteries flow

the gifts of mountain-peaks.

Its fields have been shaped by many alluvial layers.

Mysterious vital juices from diverse sources

have spread themselves in harvests upon harvests.

From the east and the west networks of song-streams

lull its sleep and wake.

Ambassadress of the cosmos, that river,

she who brings the far near, bids us greet

the unknown at our doorsteps, – it was she

who wove the day of my birth. And for ever

on her streams, untied, my mobile home

drifts from bank to bank.

I am an outcast. I am a vagabond.

Boundless bounty piles my birthday plate

again and again with food, making no bones about it.