A Purple River

A Purple River

I can see you sitting on the bank of the purple river
as the even-tide blends the blue of the day with the grey of night

I can see you watching the river and the even-tide
as the river gathers the moment and lets it go with the flow.
Neither the river nor the moment is going to feel the same.
They both belong to time and with the time must they flow and go.
And yet in their going there is something that refuses to go.
They will linger to stay and catch you by
and then you will not let them go,
which they too know  and wherever you go
they will carry you with their flow.

I see you sitting by the purple river
sharing a secret word, a name which will give you passage to her sacred heart and her dried up paths.

I watch in silence the purple river bathe you in waves, wash you clean and rinse you soft,
and set you free to be born to earth and her god, a ritual not repeated oft, a moment cherished by the river and you.

I see the awful winter spread a sheet of ice and spikes of  snow and the purple river frozen.
I see you cloistered behind the walls of your home, waiting for the hand of summer.

Here in the sultry sands when the desert-winds will sear the sky
and the flame of the forest will leap up to touch the heaven of gods
I will wait for your river to touch me with her purple breeze
and when your landscape will freeze under the breath of ice
I will pray and hope and try to send  some of the desert-wind
to make your ice melt and the river flow.
that is the reason we are born so,
I with fire and you with snow.


Sushama Karnik

A Covenant

A Covenant

The spaces inside the emptiness,

Have not the dry stumps of forgotten pain now.

From  somewhere afar

Come  tidings.

I listen and I know the words are drowned like ink erased by careless spilling over of water.

Words, those which are legible in ink and those swallowed by distance and time

Enter and find a place, half awaited and most of all an unbesought grace.

Grieve not over the darkness

that once covered the path.

Neither agony, nor numbness,

Neither the solitude nor the presence; I merge into a peace that is a bliss too, which I had not known before.

Much there is to be said, perhaps ought to be said; but is held back for constraints I have taken on over ages; a legacy of a culture, perhaps not known to you in your world of open skies.

My silence has recognized its language; It has found a covenant; a promise that it will speak and not fall into abyss again.

The Roots in Heaven Sushama Karnik

The Roots in Heaven

When a profound sleep
comes unbesought
and the very silence falls asleep,
that is the time when the smile fades
and the sadness speaks,
the veil falls away
and the voice, like an anguished child,
wails without a word.
The emptiness scatters the soul;
the shadows from the void
arise to hold
the drifting oar.
An endless march of sounds and shades,
each footfall in the dark is on the splinters of dreams lying in the way,
and I bleed.
The nights pass by and the days fade,
and the mind goes on seeing ceaselessly,
the dreams of blossoms
in the days of fall.
Certain links there are
which form and grow
with no light of reason
on their roots to show;
visible only when the tree has grown
with the roots in heaven
and the branches below.

Sequel to Ghalib

Sequel to Ghalib
I cast away what was called religion,
 I cast away the shrubbery
of what was called language.
 I went past the scriptures
and threw away all the maps save the one that pointed to a destination that seemed far away and yet so near.
I listened to a voice that spoke ever so near and nearer still like the inevitable, a mystery that can be a torment more than a mystery when you know and do not know.
Neither a question nor an answer,
not even a desire to know.
Neither numbness nor a tremor,;
what do I do with this stillness at heart? There is no God to answer my call.
When the one human voice falls silent within, God too would not speak.
God, like you my love, would not speak unless made to speak.
 Awareness comes when everything I know is called into doubt, and the language I spoke, no longer holds ME at its heart.
What did I use language for but to represent, not me but the convention of belief that was seen as me.

What did I ask for? There were questions
and battles being fought over issues that seemed far more relevant and valid than the question, not the question, but torment, of the arid loneliness of the heart.

  Ridden with the guilt of not having done enough to lighten the burden that was not mine own-- commitment all along, a responsibility to begin with and a guilt-ridden conscience towards the end,
and robbed of what i longed for----
 the myth and the archetype of my life here.  That is the answer I landed with as I searched within for that one single answer which is ME.
The distant voice that beckoned Ghalib in the deserts of his India was, he faintly believed to be love; the source of it did not matter; be it God or be it a woman.
At the end of the day, we have to satisfy ourselves saying that it came from within. Solipsism--- the answer to everything that we search outside of ourselves.
But we know, that was not where we really wished to look for.
Solipsism is the soul's frustration
speaking to us as a wizened knowledge of what we call life
when I know it is the voice of my frustration speaking to me at the innermost depth of aloneness,  the Inevitable--like the God we create,
 when I cannot link in spirit to anything outside the lonely Self.
I don't know if a god can choose to dwell inside this lonely, empty space.

Sushama Karnik

Neena's poem

A little love, a small share of affection,
a caress; just a hint to her that you care;
that's all it takes for a woman to throw away
a life she owned.
Give her the rope that ties her to trust
and she becomes the kite
and her dreams will soar
and scale the heights
and she will gauge the limits of the sky.
Give her just this much of yourself
and you will see her swing and sway
on the hammock
 tied to the branches in the rains.
You will have her pick up the scent of love
in the most hidden spaces
and then you will see her bend 
to weed out the thorns from your way
and spread them over
with petals of rose instead.