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