in the endless sky, like a mother whose sleep’s been murdered,
whose bed is empty, whose child is dead.
The more I study the names of new countries
and their varied accounts, the more my mind
rushes forward, wanting to touch all; say, by a sea,
between small blue hills there lies a hamlet where
fishing-nets lie on the beach, drying in the sun,
a boat hovers on the waters, a sail stirs,
a fisherman fishes, and through a steep ravine
a narrow stream winds its way, twists and turns.
How I wish I could
embrace with my arms, press to my heart that nest
of human habitation, cosily ensconced
in the lap of hills and resonant with the waves!
Whatever exists anywhere I wish to make mine,
melt myself into a river’s current,
to village after village on either bank
offer myself as water to quench men’s thirst,
sing my murmuring song both day and night;
become a chain of lofty mountains stretching
from the sea where the sun rises to the sea where it sets,
rim to rim, a cincture to the earth,
noble in my mystery, which none may fathom,
and on my hard stone lap, where the chill wind sharply blows,
secretly cradle, rear to manhood new
unknown nations. Deep is my desire
in country after country to identify
myself with all men; to be born
as an Arab child in the desert, fearless and free,
raised on camel’s milk; to explore
cold stone mansions, Buddhist monasteries
on Tibet’s plateau; to drink grape-wine
as a Persian in a rose-garden; to ride
horses as an intrepid Tartar; to be polite
and vigorous as a Japanese; to toil
with dedication as in the ancient Chinese land;
to experience existence in all homes.
Oh, to be a naked barbarian, sturdy, robust, fierce,
neither to duties nor to prohibitions geared,
bound by nothing – neither customs, nor scruples, nor doubts,
nor a sense of mine and thine, nor the fever of thought;
one whose life-flow always rushes unchecked,
colliding with what’s in front, bearing clouts
without a whimper, never looking back –
stung by conscience or in vain remorse –
nor regarding the future with false hopes,
but on the wave-peaks of the here and the now
dancing and moving on in thrilled delight!
Yes, that life’s unruly, but I still love it,
and how often have I wished I could submit
to that vitality’s storm, hurtling like a light-weight
boat in full sail!
The forest’s ferocious tiger
easily bears his own enormous heft
by his immense strength. His body, vivid and bright
like thunder within which fire lurks, beneath
forests which are like clouds, with a mighty roar
as deep as thunder springs suddenly upon his prey
with lightning’s speed. Effortless is that greatness,
violence-keen that joy, that proud triumph:
even such things I wish to savour once!
I would, if I could, drink again and again
the manifold wines of joy that overflow
all the goblets that this cosmos holds.
Beautiful earth, as I have looked upon you,
how often has my spirit leapt into song
with huge happiness! How I have craved
to get a firm grip on your ocean-girdled waist
and keep it pressed to my breast;
to spread myself in every direction, as pervasive
and boundless as the morning sun; to dance
all day long upon forests, upon mountains,
on the undulations of trembling leaves; to kiss
every flower that buds; to embrace
all the tender densely growing greenswards;
to oscillate as on a swing of delight
on every wave; and quietly at night
with hushed footsteps to come as cosmic sleep,
stroking the eyes of all your birds and beasts
with my own fingers, entering every bed,
nest, home, cave, den that there is, spreading myself
like a gigantic sari-end upon
all that exists, cloaking it
with the gentlest darkness!
My earth, you are
so many years old; with me mixed in your clay,
unwearied in the limitless firmament,
you have orbited the sun; and for nights and days
spanning millennia within me your grass has grown,
flowers in clusters have opened,
so many trees have shed their leaves, buds, fruits,
odoriferous pollen! Hence in the present time,
maybe one day, sitting alone with a drifting mind
on Padma’s bank, gazing with charmed eyes,
with all my limbs and awareness I can sense
how grass-seeds sprout with shivers within your soil,
how, inside you, streams of vital fluids
circulate night and day, how flower-buds
appear with blind ecstatic delight,
shielded by lovely calyces, how in the morning sun
grass-blades, climbers, trees, shrubs rejoice,
with a concealed thrill and almost foolish elation,
like infants wearied by suckling at mothers’ breasts,
fully satisfied, smiling at pleasant dreams.
Likewise some day when post-rains sunrays
fall on fields of ripened golden crops,
rows of coconut palms quiver in the breeze,
shimmer in the sun, there rises within me such
an immense yearning, as if in remembrance
of bygone days when my sentience was dispersed
everywhere – in land, water, leaves,
the sky’s azure. And the entire world
seems to send me a hundred inarticulate calls,
like the familiar hubbub of manifold
gladsome games played by my perennial
companions, a happy commingled murmur
issuing from a vast, varied nursery.
Take me back
once more to that refuge, remove that hurt
of separation that throbs from time to time
within my mind, when in the evening’s rays
I look at a big meadow, as cows return
from far pastures, kicking dust from field-paths,
smoke curls from tree-encircled hamlets
up to the evening sky, far off the moon
appears slowly, slowly like a weary farer,
and on the deserted sandbank by the river
I feel so lonely, such an alien,
like an exile, and with arms outstretched
I rush out to receive the entire outer world
within myself: sky, earth, river-nestled
heaps of sleeping calm white moonlight. But I can’t
touch anything and just stare at an emptiness
in utter despondence. Take me back
to the centre of that wholeness, whence continually
life germinates in a hundred thousand ways,
sends out shoots and buds, whence songs burst
in a million melodies, dances emanate
in countless gestures, where the mind flows
in torrents of ideas and emotions, where every hole
belongs to a flute that plays, and where you stand,
black mythic cow of plenty, being milked
from a thousand angles by plants, birds, beasts,
numberless thirsty creatures, the juice of joy
raining in so many ways and all the directions
echoing to that murmuring music. I wish
to taste that various, universal bliss
in one moment, all elements together,
united with all. And will not your groves
be even greener, mingled with my gladness?
Will not a few new trembling rays invade
the morning sunshine? Surely my ecstasy
will dye both earth and sky with the heart’s pigments,
gazing at which, within a poet’s mind
poems shall rise, lovers’ eyes shall fill
with emotion’s intoxication, and from bird-beaks
sudden songs shall spring. O earth,
all your limbs are dyed with the happiness
of so many thousands!
Floods of creatures have again and again
enveloped you with their lives, gone and returned,
mixing their hearts’ affection with your humus,
writing so many scripts, spreading in so many directions
such yearning eager embraces! With them I shall
mingle all my love with diligent care,
dye your sari’s end with vivid colours.
Yes, I shall
deck you with my all. And will not
some enchanted ear on a river-bank
hear my song in the water’s murmur? Will not
some earth-dweller rise from sleep, perceive
my song in the dawn-light? A hundred years hence
will not my spirit quiver in this lovely forest’s
layers of leaves? In home after home
hundreds of men and women will for long
play their games of domesticity, and will not
something of myself remain in their loves?
Tell me, will I not
descend as laughter on their faces or as lush
youth on all their limbs? Will I not be
their sudden pleasure on a spring day or a young
keen bud of love sprouting in a nook
of their minds? Could you, motherland,
abandon me altogether? Could the tough
earthen cord that has endured for ages
suddenly be severed? Might I have to leave
the soft lap that has cradled me a million years?
Rather, from all sides won’t they pull me to them:
all these trees, shrubs, mountains, rivers, glens,
this deep blue sky that belongs to eternity,
this generous breeze that wafts such vitality,
light that wakes, the knitted social lives
within which all creatures live enmeshed?
Yes, I’ll circle you; I shall dwell among
your own kinsfolk; as birds, beasts, worms,
trees, shrubs, creepers you’ll call me again and again,
draw me to your warm throbbing bosom;
age after age, life after life you’ll press
your breasts to my mouth, assuage the million
hungers of my lives with the dripping ambrosial milk
of a million delights, emptying yourself
and making me drink with your deepest tenderness.
Then shall I, a young man, earth’s grown up son,
travel the world, traverse continents,
venture far, far among constellations
along inaccessible tracks. But as yet
I’ve not had enough; thirst for your nectar-milk
still clings to my mouth; your face
still brings lovely dreams before my eyes;
nothing of you have I finished yet;
all is mysterious, and my steady gaze
hasn’t yet plumbed the depth of its own amazement.
Like a child I still cling to your bosom,
my eyes on your face. Mother, hold me, please,
within the firmest embrace of your arms.
Make me your own, one who belongs to your breast:
that secret source from where the fountain rises –
of your vast vitality and varied delights –
do take me there. Don’t keep me away.
[11 November 1893]
On the Doctrine of Maya
Joyless country, in tattered decrepitude dressed,
burdened by your own sagacity, you think
that God’s deception has been caught red-handed
by your too-clever discriminating gaze.
With a wit as sharp as a needle of kush-grass,
unemployed, you sit at home night and day,
convinced that this earth, this universe,
planets and stars in the firmament are fakes.
Birds and beasts, creatures of many species,
bereft of fear, have breathed here for ages.
To them this created world is a mother’s lap,
but you, old dotard, have faith in nothing! And this
cosmic concourse, fairground of millions, billions
of living things is to you child’s play.
[Simla? November 1893?]
Play
Well, maybe it’s play, but one which we must join
with everyone, in a happy hullabaloo!
What would be the point of leaving it all and sitting
silently in a dark corner of the self?
Know that you are but a child in this vast world,
in the cradle of infinite time, in the sky’s playground:
you think you know it all, but you know nothing!
Pick it up – with faith, humility, love –
that grand toy – coloured, musical, scented –
which your mother’s given you. Well, maybe it’s dust!
So what? Isn’t it dust beyond compare?
Prematurely senile, don’t mope, sitting alone:
you won’t be an adult till you join the merry-go-round!
On Her Powerlessness
Where I’ve found myself, there I belong,
a needy offspring of this indigent earth.
The burden of pains and pleasures I’ve had since birth
I’ve decided to accept as my sheer good luck.
My earthen mother, green and all-enduring,
I know your hands don’t hold infinite riches.
You want to feed all hungry mouths, but alas,
so often you can’t; and ‘What, what can we eat?’ –
your children cry, their faces pale and withered.
Mother, I know your hands hold unfinished pleasures:
whatever you shape and give us breaks into pieces.
Death, omnivorous, pokes his fingers in every pie
and all our hopes you can never satisfy,
but that’s no reason to forsake your warm breast!
[Simla? November 1893?]
FROM Chitra (1896)
Farewell to Heaven
Now fades the garland of mandars round my neck,
o great Indra, and the radiant mark is quenched
on my sullied forehead. My piety’s strength
wanes. And gods, goddesses, today I must
say goodbye to heaven. Gladly have I spent
many millennia in the kingdom of the gods
as one of the immortals, and had hoped to see
at this parting-hour a hint of tears
in heaven’s eyes. But heartless, void of grief,
indifferent, this happy celestial land
just looks on. The passing of millennia
is not a blink to its eyes; not even the hurt
a branch of the peepul-tree feels, when from its edge
the driest leaf falls, can be felt by heaven, when
hundreds of us, like burnt-out refugee stars,
are dislodged, to descend, in an instant,
even from the region of the gods down to the earth’s
unending stream of births and deaths. And should
such hurt have been felt, should the merest trace
of separation’s shadow have fallen across heaven,
then would its eternal brilliance have been veiled
with soft dewy vapours as on earth; Nandan-garden
would have murmured sighs; Mandakini,
lapping its banks, would have, in liquid voice,
sung sad tales; at the day’s end
evening would have come, walked like a hermitess
to the horizon, beyond lone fields; still nights
would have played the chanting crickets’ ascetic chorus
under the assembled stars; in the hall of the gods
at times dancing Menaka’s golden anklets
would have missed a beat; leaning on Urbashi’s breast,
her golden vina, strings roughly pressed,
would have at times, as if unawares to her,
burst into sudden bars of tragic music.
Lines of idle tears might then have appeared
on the dry eyes of the gods; by her husband’s side,
throned on the same seat, Shachi might have suddenly looked
into Indra’s eyes, as if seeking water for her thirst.
And the wind might have wafted towards heaven
sudden gusts of the earth’s long-drawn sighs,
shaking petals off the Nandan branches.
Stay laughing, heaven. Gods, keep drinking your nectar.
Heaven is indeed your very own place of bliss,
where we are aliens. Earth – she is no heaven,
but she’s a motherland; that’s why her eyes
stream with tears, if after a few days
anyone leaves her even for a few hours.
The humble, the meek, the most incompetent,
sinners and sick men – all she would hold tight
in an eager embrace, fasten to her soft breast,
such is the pleasure a mother gets from the touch
of her children’s dusty bodies. So let there flow
nectar in heaven, and on earth let love,
for ever mixed with pains and pleasures, stream,
keeping earth’s heaven-spots evergreen with tears.
Nymph, may the pain of love never diminish
the shine of your bright eyes. I bid you goodbye.
You desire nobody, nor grieve for any.
Should my love be born in the poorest home on earth,
by the side of a river, at the edge of a village, in a hut
half-hidden in the shade of a peepul, she might
carefully save for me her ambrosial store
within her breast. When she’s a child,