my body and mind merged, reduced to a line.
Gradually the limits of time dissolved.
An instant and eternity became one.
The ocean of empty space shrank to a point
of the deepest, the most ultimate blackness.
I was swallowed by that ocean of a point.
The dark lost its darkness. There was none called ‘I’,
yet in a curious way it seemed there was.
Awareness, gagged, blind beneath unawareness,
waited for someone or something, like a life-breath
lingering eternally after death.
I opened my eyes. Ganga flowed as before,
and my boat was speeding westward to its mooring.
Faint lamps flickered in cottages on the bank,
and above, the moon was as honey-faced as ever.
The earth kept her vigil, creatures asleep on her lap.
[Ghazipur, 28 April 1888]
The Amatory Conversation of a Young Bengali Couple
The Wedding Night
GROOM. Life to life when first united
brings a peerless pleasure.
Forget all else! With lifted eyes
let’s just gaze at each other.
Heart to heart in shy confusion
in one spot joined together,
drugged by the same fascination, let’s
suck honey from the same flower.
I’m but ashes, ’cause since I was born
I’ve simply been on fire;
but your ocean of love is boundless;
burning, I’ve come for water.
Just say this once, ‘I too am yours
and truly desire none other.’
What? Sweetheart? Wherefore do you rise?
BRIDE. I want to sleep with my Nan. [She cries.]
A Few Days Later
GROOM. Sweetest love, forlorn in a corner,
wherefore all this weeping?
Has the morning lost its morning star?
Are these its dewdrops peeping?
Has the spring gone? And is that why
the forest goddess is wailing?
Is wild memory sitting on the grave
of buried hope, complaining?
Or is a meteor missing its home,
the blue sky, which it’s mourning?
Why these tears?
BRIDE. For my pussy-cat
left at home, I’m crying.
In the Back Garden
GROOM. Lighting up this space beneath a tree,
what are you doing in the forest greensward?
Look at these locks brushing your soft cheeks!
Aren’t they wily? Aren’t they wayward?
Look at this stream curling at your feet:
as it flows, it seems to weep.
All day long you’re listening to its song:
tell me, isn’t it lulling you to sleep?
Fallen flowers heaped on your cloth-end,
sad and neglected: what a shame!
Remembering someone’s face, did you
make mistakes as you tried to thread ’em?
The breeze that blows, swaying your ear-rings,
of whom does it whisper in your ears?
The busy bees with their specious buzzing –
whose name do they murmur? Can you hear?
Your eyes are smiling, your memories happy
in this deliciously private grove.
What are you doing in this arbour, this alcove?
BRIDE. Sitting and eating some juicy jujubes.
GROOM. I’ve come to you to tell you all
that’s pent up in my wretched mind.
Weary of its own weight, this heart
can nowhere any comfort find.
My mind’s a-flutter with je ne sais quoi
in this honeyed springtime.
Recklessly does the wind entreat
the malati buds to open.
Ah, those eyes – they look toward me –
a message of hope is being expressed!
And that heart bursts, a love escapes,
half-nervous, half-embarrassed.
Day and night my soul is awake
only for your sake;
wants to give its all in your service,
from you its commands to take.
My life, my youth – everything I’ll risk,
plunder the world to fetch you a gift.
Sweetheart, tell me – what can I fix?
BRIDE. Get me more jujubes, – say, another six.
GROOM. Well then, friend, let me depart
with a life vacant, despondent.
Might you shed but one tear-drop
for me when I am absent?
The spring breeze with its magic breath
may well set your heart on fire
and resurrect within your breast
slumbering desires.
Doleful girl in this lonely woodland,
what will you do, my darling?
How will you spend your time when I’m gone?
BRIDE. I’ll arrange a dolls’ wedding.
[Ghazipur, 6 July 1888]
FROM Sonar Tari (1894)
I Won’t Let You Go
The carriage stands at the door. It is midday.
The autumn sun is gradually gathering strength.
The noon wind blows the dust on the deserted
village path. Beneath a cool peepul
an ancient, weary beggar-woman sleeps
on a tattered cloth. All is hushed and still
and shines brilliantly – like a sun-lit night.
Only in my home there’s neither siesta nor rest.
Ashwin’s gone. The Puja vacation’s ended.
I’ve to return to the far-off place where I work.
Servants, busybodies, shout and fuss
with ropes and strings, tying packages sprawled
in this room and that, all over the house.
The lady of the house, her heart heavy as a stone,
her eyes moist, nevertheless has no time
to shed tears, no, not a minute: she has
too much to organise, rushes about,
extremely busy, and though there already is
too much baggage, she reckons it’s not enough.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘what on earth shall I do with these –
so many stewpots, jugs, bowls, casseroles,
bedclothes, bottles, boxes? Let me take
a few and leave the rest behind.’
Nobody pays
the slightest attention to what I say. ‘You might
suddenly feel the need for this or that
and where then would you find it far from home?
Golden moong beans, long-grain rice, betel leaves,
areca-nuts; in that bowl, covered, a few blocks
of date-palm molasses; firm ripe coconuts;
two containers of fine mustard oil;
dried mango, mango-cakes; milk – two seers –
and in these jars and bottles your medicines.
Some sweet goodies I’ve left inside this bowl.
For goodness’s sake, do eat them, don’t forget them.’
I realise it would be useless to argue with her.
There it is, my luggage, piled high as a mountain.
I look at the clock, then look back at the face
of my beloved, and gently say, ‘Bye then.’
Quickly she turns her face away, head bent,
and pulls the end of her sari over her eyes
to hide her tears, for tears are inauspicious.
By the front door sits my daughter, four years old,
low in spirits, who, on any other day,
would have had her bath well completed by now,
and with two mouthfuls of lunch would have succumbed
to drowsiness in her eyelids, but who, today,
neglected by her mother, has neither bathed
nor lunched yet. Lik
e a shadow she has
kept close to me all morning, observing
the fuss of the packing, silent, wide-eyed.
Weary now, and sunk in some thought of hers,
she sits by the front door quietly, without a word.
‘Goodbye then, poppet,’ when I say,
she simply replies, sad-eyed, her face grave:
‘I won’t let you go.’ That is all.
She sits where she is, makes not the slightest attempt
to either hold my arm or close the door,
but only with her heart’s right, given by love,
proclaims her stand: ‘I won’t let you go.’
Yet in the end the time comes when, alas,
she has to let me go.
Foolish girl, my
daughter, who gave you the strength
to make such a statement, so bold, so self-assured –
‘I won’t let you go’? Whom will you,
in this universe, with two little hands
hold back, proud girl, and against whom fight,
with that tiny weary body of yours by the door,
that stock of love in your heart your only arms?
Nervously, shyly, urged by our pain within,
we can but express our innermost desire,
just say, ‘I do not wish
to let you go.’ But who can
say such a thing as ‘I won’t let you go’!
Hearing such a proud assertion of love
from your little mouth, the world, with a mischievous smile,
dragged me from you, and you, quite defeated,
sat by the door like a picture, tears in your eyes.
All I could do was mop my own eyes and leave.
On either side of the road as I move on
fields of autumn, bent by the weight of their crops,
bask in the sun; trees, indifferent to others,
stand on either side, staring all day
at their own shadows. Full, autumnal,
Ganga flows rapidly. In the blue heavens
white cloudlets lie like delicate new-born calves,
fully satisfied with their mother’s milk
and blissfully asleep. I sigh,
looking at the earth, stretching to the horizon,
weary of the passing epochs, bare in the brilliant sun.
In what a profound sadness are sky and earth
immersed! The further I go,
the more I hear the same piteous note:
‘I won’t let you go!’ From the earth’s edge
to the outermost limits of the blue heavens rings
this perennial cry, without beginning, without end:
‘I won’t let you go! I won’t let you go!’ That’s what
they all say – ‘I won’t let you go!’ Mother earth,
holding the littlest grass-stalk to her breast,
says with all her power: ‘I won’t let you go!’
And in a lamp about to go out, someone seems
to pull the dying flame from darkness’s grasp,
saying a hundred times, ‘Ah, I won’t let you go!’
From heaven to earth in this infinite universe
this is the oldest statement, the deepest cry –
‘I won’t let you go!’ And yet, alas,
we have to let go of everything, and they go.
Thus it has been since time without beginning.
In creation’s torrent, carrier of deluging seas,
they all rush past with fierce velocity,
eyes burning, eager arms outstretched,
moaning, calling – ‘Won’t, won’t let you go!’ –
filling the shores of the cosmos with their clamour.
‘Won’t, won’t let you go,’ declares the rear wave
to the front wave, but none listens
or responds.
From all directions today
that sad heart-rending wail reaches my ears,
ringing without pause, and in my daughter’s voice:
a cry of the cosmos quite as importunate
as a child’s. Since time began
all it gets it loses. Yet its grasp
of things hasn’t slackened, and in the pride
of undiminished love, like my daughter of four,
ceaselessly it sends out this cry: ‘I won’t let you go!’
Face wan, tears streaming,
its pride is shattered each hour, every minute.
Yet such is love, it never concedes defeat
and in a choked voice rebelliously repeats:
‘I won’t let you go!’ Each time it loses,
each time it blurts, ‘How can what I
love be ever alienated from me?
Is there anything in this whole universe
as full of yearning, as superlative,
as mighty, as boundless as my desire?’
So saying, it arrogantly proclaims:
‘I won’t let you go’, only to see at once
its cherished treasure blown away by a breath
like trivial dry dust, whereupon
eyes overflowing, like a tree uprooted,
it collapses on the ground, pride crushed, head bent.
Yet this remains love’s plea:
‘I won’t let the Creator break His promise to me.
A great pledge, sealed and signed, to me was given,
a charter of rights in perpetuity.’
Thus, though thin and frail, and face to face
with almighty death, it says, swollen with pride,
‘Death, you don’t exist!’ What cheek!
Death sits, smiling. And that eternal love,
so death-tormented, for ever in a flutter
with restless anxiety, has quite overpowered
this infinite universe, like the dampness of tears
suffusing sad eyes. A weary hope against hope
has drawn a mist of dejection over the whole
universe. Yes, I think I see
two hapless imploring arms lie quietly,
to bind it in its embrace, like a still reflection
lying in a flowing stream – some illusion
of a cloud charged with raindrops and tears.
Wherefore today I can hear
so much yearning in the rustling of the trees,
as the noonday’s hot wind, idly unmindful, plays
meaningless games with dry leaves, and as the day wanes,
lengthening the shadows under the peepul trees.
The cosmos is a field where the infinite’s flute
plays a pastoral lament. And she sits and listens,
earth, her hair down, and it fills her with longing,
there, in the far cornfields, by Ganga’s borders,
a golden cloth-end, sunlight-yellow, drawn
over her breast. Her eyes are still,
fixed on the far blue sky, and she says nothing.
Yes, I’ve seen her pale face,
no different from the face of my daughter of four,
so quiet, so hurt, and nearly lost in the door-edge.
[Calcutta, 29 October 1892]
Earth
Earth, take me back,
your lap-child back to your lap
in the shelter of your sari’s voluminous end.
Mother made of earth, may I
live diffused in your soil; spread
myself in every direction like spring’s joy;
burst this breast-cage, shatter this stone-closed
narrow wall, this blind dismal jail
of self; swing, hum, shake,
flop, radiate, disperse,
shudder, be startled by
sudden lights and thrills,
flow through the whole globe –
edge to edge, north to south,
east to west; burgeon
with secret sap in moss, lichen, grass,
branch, bar
k, leaf; touch
with rippling fingers cornfields bent with the weight
of golden ears; privily fill
new blossoms with colour, aroma, nectar;
fill too, with blue, waters of vast seas,
and dance to ceaseless waves on quiet beaches;
hurrah language from wave to wave everywhere;
lay myself like a white scarf on mountain-tops,
in lofty regions of solitude, lands of hushed
unsullied snow.
The desire that unawares to me
has long been welling in me like a secret spring,
now, having brimmed the heart, wants to get out
in a flow that will be free, generous, bold,
uncontrolled – in order to bedew you.
How shall I crack this heart, how unfetter
that anguished wish, send it in a million streams
to all lands and directions!
Therefore, simply sitting at home,
I’m always greedily devouring travelogues,
tales of those whom curiosity has driven
to roam in strange places. And with them
I girdle you in my imagination’s meshes.
Far lands difficult of access,
endless savannahs with neither trees nor tracks,
theatres of dire thirst, where the glare
from burning sand-heaps pierces eyes like needles,
beds of dust to the horizon upon which
earth, flushed with fever, lies and pants,
breath inflamed, throat parched, body on fire,
ruthless, taciturn, all alone.
Many a time sitting at home by my window,
looking out, I’ve imagined scenes far away:
say, a blue lake, hushed, secluded,
clear as crystal, circled by sierras,
cloudlets clinging to the peaks like suckling infants;
snow-lines, visible above the mountains’ blue,
block our sight, like row upon row
of immobile barricades mushroomed through heaven,
sentries posted at yoga-immersed
matted-hair Shiva’s hermitage.
In my mind I’ve roamed
on far-off polar beaches where earth’s vowed
eternal virginity in chill attire,
bereft of jewels, desires, company;
where at long night’s end, day returns,
but without sound or music; and night comes,
with none to sleep, stays steadfastly awake