POEM

Non- Place of Being

 

I tap on the door

and it opens

But before I enter

the door enters me

and keeps on opening countless doors

inside myself

I cannot decide

Am I crossing the thresholds

or are they crossing me

one after the other?

Confounded, I search for a roof

but before I detect one

the earth beneath my feet

slips away

 

 

In Search of Lost Time

 

Past carries away

so much with it

Like cliffs collapsing

in some violent rainstorm

all that was there

a moment before

vanishes

with the wet earth

and we remain

chasing their imprints

In your last dream

and my dry eyes

Silence

keeps on spreading

perpetually

like moss

on my memory

and in your heart

And we are left

like a defeated gust of wind

that strains to clasp

for a while

a leaf

just fallen from the tree

 

 

Eternal Cities

 

Cities where we go journeying

their streets without time or reason Borges (New England 1967)

 

Beyond the pages of history

in the timeworn shoe-soles

we find them

their fire-branded outlines

run through our arteries

like morning mantras

 

Ghostly city limits blurred

into the dark truth of soul,

it generously opens its cloak

to shield us from the

dazzling day light

that wiped out our footprints

Made up of dew drops

 

Away from its maze-like lanes and streets,

Dunghills and rows of brick-houses,

church-bells, shimmering mask of Gods or

desperate voice of muezzin

Cities pour down on our drenched Being

like the bestowed childhood

Cities do not exist in any predestined

place on earth in sepia color

they exist inside us

exactly there, where a green shoot just dried up

where the sky becomes barren

and the sacred river turns to desert

 

 

Exile

 

All through life

an unending journey

accompanies you

And in the absence of

a destination

much of what’s inside gets lost

And the warp and weft of being

keeps on breaking

 

 

Beyond

 

Stillness spreads its wings

like the desert

beneath a dawning sky

The paraplegic pyramids glitter

in a mixture of azure and gold

There is still a lot to say

beyond civilization

 

 

Viennese Coffee-houses

 

No sooner does dusk fall

than the city’s cafés come to life

with the tinkling clang of indifference

Gradually the crowd of solitude gathers

around the tables

 

1947

 

They depart

And more houses sink

into darkness

The street shrinks a little bit more

Night clenches

the morbid left-over light

From the Tower of Silence

flocks of fear-symbols descend

in quest of a morsel

Those remaining behind

continue to slumber

under a thick layer of indifference

They wake up

only to move

from dream to dream

and murmur

unanswerable questions

They depart

And life shrinks

a little bit more

 

Life

 

Wandering in orbit
merely results from
the force of attraction
Or may be an endeavour
to enter the navel of being
Asking for an answer
an exercise in futility
Bound by the frame of life
we remain hanging
on the wall of an exhibition
or staring at the frame
like silent onlookers
– an incomprehensible process
What is simple,
is life
which is only the sum
of a few letters