The Smile

The Smile of Mona Lisa

The smile, held back,
vanished for a moment, and slid
to hide behind the eye-lids,
 then descended to the lips
and played around the contours,
flipping around the corners
to disappear in the shadows
of silence that sealed the lips.
A beguiling play the shadows make
when the model sits in endless sessions
hiding the persona in the fleeting encounters
between the soul of the object and the gaze of the artist.
What is revealed is a mystery
forever wrapped away
in the moments sealed and given away
to the secret bond of silence
that briefly touched the two alien minds
who were trying to decipher
the silence that united them.
The faintest shadow that played around
below the eyelids and spread its gloom,
an augury of the invisible Time ,
the Time that smiled and warned to watch for the age,
caressed the visage and stayed behind.
The portrait complete, defied age,
while the tremor remained
to speak of a mystery throbbing alive, the fear of aging and death, 

caressed the visage and stayed behind the overlaid paint.
.
the fear of aging and death.

The Portals In The Sky

The Portals in the Sky

What madness, O cloud, what quirk of the mind!
No philosopher  can read away
the word you hide in your terrorizing rains.
The towers watch for the signs;
see no omens.

The signs are all swept away
in the elation
of the waves that rock the horizon's calm
and the certainty of the tidal waves.

You have arrived like a column of smoke
erupting to swallow  the slumber of the sea and the sky.
A grey elation, never heard of.
Elation without a logic to its augury,
a magical, enchanted pleasure-dome,
or a shroud that hides the apocalyptic dawn!

Hold your thunder, hold your wrath!
Let me have my breath in peace
before I can read and understand
the script that you write on the waters.

Screen Idols

Screen Idols

Screen idols, you do not know
how your fragmented images weave a myth
from the moments you impress upon the screen
in isolate fractions cut off from the stream,
a passionate kiss, an uplifted face and hands cupped around a neck, eyes that delve into the depth of the other's secret being!
You repeat like a puppet those rehearsed passions and every retake is filled
with the boredom and the sweat on the brow that you cannot wipe.
The dazzling lights and the flashes of lights glaring all around
and you do not know how the eye behind the camera
quickly captures the fleeting shadow playing around
the corner of the mouth and then
even the tip of your nose begins to speak.
You know not how those isolate images cut off from the stream, reassembled in a claustrophobic lab and finally on to the screen
are meant to set ablaze
millions of hearts in their intrepid rage.
A signal from the director ends the take
and you withdraw into your separate corners, disenchanted, to light a cigarette and watch,
each an island unto the self, like a passenger watching, waiting in the lounge.

(c) Sushama Karnik

Image Courtesy Hector Merced
Joan Fontaine & Laurence Olivier in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca  (1940)

Sunset In The Desert

The sun is saying adieu to the sand,
and the gold of the morn that tinged the sand has turned a fiery red. The tree, th only one, ablaze with the rays of the parting sun,
is slowly reduced to ashen grey.
The sun is a peculiar lover when in love with the sand, reluctant to leave the sizzling warmth, knowing well what the cruelty of the cold moon can do to the sand.
A carpet of royal red is the parting gift the sun leaves at the end of the silent day.
The red holds hands with the dancing shadows
and the sun is not ashamed of the mirage.

SUNSET...Image Courtesy Darlene Walsh

A Dawn In The Desert

A Dawn In The Desert

A dawn in the deserts transforms the sand.
The dunes swing. The lone camel trudges along
after a wakeful night, with a wakeful master
by its side.
The immensity of the desert is stunned by the trail of the footprints in the sand
of a lone man walking, miles and miles with an only camel
trailing behind.
The longest shadows on that day are cast
and seen by the rising sun, the only witness on the horizon.
Somewhere in the distance is a storm that swirls the sand
Soon this morning, golden,warm
with nothing to show fo the morrow
will fight the clouds in the dusty sky.
The man and the camel must hasten .
The day has just begun.

DAWN..

A Faraway Dawn and a Faraway Night

A Faraway Dawn and a Faraway Night

Far,far away, indeed in another world, the morning will unfurl her glory in the sky.
Wrapped up in a mystic fog, a world, a town, sleeps and wakes up to another dawn. Someone wakes up and prays,
digging his feet deep in the sand
and throws away a gift of pearls to the waves lashing on his shores, on his shoulders,sweeping over him as he holds his head
triumphantly above the sweep of the tide.
My world sleeps as you are awake to the sounds and the sights not revealed to me.
Somewhere in that hour of dawn,
somewhere in the crash of the waves, the rocks fight back, survive,
survive the waves,
waves rising and falling and swirling in the foam
and in my dream I hear the unreal sea and the unreal storm;
I see and hear
the rocks take the challenge and hurl back the tide
as the the deep red tinges the horizon, hills and the sky.
Dark descends
faster than a meteor upon my world
and I wake up to a new birth in another world, another world of a mystic dawn where you belong.
world of a mystic dawn where you belong.
My darkness recedes; I fight your wars; add my spirit , my will gathered from the aeons past.
Your day, your battles are all mine.
My world goes to sleep
and that is the time for my spirit to wake.
A vigilant sleep hovers and spreads with an incantation.
Here, or there; now my world is everywhere,
over your sunlit fields, sparkling waves and domes of fire and burning hills
 Every day as I wake up from sleep it is with a revelation that speaks
of a new warmth rising from every new morn,
opening into the secret of the earth,
the secret of how she holds in a deepening vault
the love that gathers her two hemispheres,
like a pair of eyes looking at the world , close and far apart.

The Body Of A River

 The Body Of A River

Dark is the heart,
dark the vessel ,
dark the waters of Yamuna.
Dark was the lover playing on  the flute
in the darkest of the hours of the night.

On an evening Radha laments
for her lost love on her banks.
Time stands still on the banks of Yamuna, she the witness of all.
Yamuna, a river given to hold
perpetual monuments of love and loss.

Evenings darken the shadows ,
ripples dance.
Stray vessels and solitary boats ply
and that's the only effort time makes
to ruffle her heart in a gentle surprise.

The full moon knows her secret passion
when she briefly opens her heart.
The dome and the minars of Taj
and the Moon streaming her light
and the Moon streaming her light
for Yamuna to carry the sacred offering
a moment's recall.

Otherwise the life on her banks
is of this world, dark and sedate.
Her gorges ,deep, vortices unseen,
do not dare to challenge her waters.
Her peace is sorrowful,
exuberance once, and as she flows,
whirlpools turning into turbulence,
turbulence anger, anger into silence,
and silence peace.

Yamuna flows, her heart expands,
she has no lament.
The notes she heard
played on the flute by the dark lover Krishna
for the fairest of the beloveds in all the lore of love
are still flowing in the ripples.

Separation from the source is the truth she knows.
In the evening the vessels come to rest,
stay anchored on her shores.
A fragile sailing boat, a straggler in the twilight shines
its lanterns glimmering in the faraway moonlight,
and the boatman singing a lonely song,
tinted by the moonrays, caught by chance.

Allahabad, the Godly meeting-place
where she merges in the overpowering embrace
of her fair, exuberant sibling of the mountain's origin,

the majestic, vociferous sister, Ganga.

but her dark interior is unsubdued
even as the shadowy waters are reminiscent
of their life as they traversed
over terrains of times past.
Yamuna is hard to reconcile.

Here merging with Ganga,
not a harmony of kindred souls,
more of an enforced meeting of contrary streams.
That's the end of a river , far too early before she reaches the sea.
The boatman plies the vessel as the walls of the fort darken,
lanterns begin to shine,
and you say adieu
An anguished farewell,
as the moon spreads its compassionate light
its lanterns glimmering in the faraway moonlight,
and the boatman singing a lonely song,
tinted by the moonrays, caught by chance.

Allahabad, the Godly meeting-place
where she merges in the overpowering embrace
of her fair, exuberant sibling of the mountain's origin,

the majestic, vociferous sister, Ganga.

but her dark interior is unsubdued
even as the shadowy waters are reminiscent
of their life as they traversed
over terrains of times past.
Yamuna is hard to reconcile.

Here merging with Ganga,
not a harmony of kindred souls,
more of an enforced meeting of contrary streams.
That's the end of a river , far too early before she reaches the sea.
The boatman plies the vessel as the walls of the fort darken,
lanterns begin to shine,
and you say adieu
An anguished farewell,
as the moon spreads its compassionate light
its lanterns glimmering in the faraway moonlight,
and the boatman singing a lonely song,
tinted by the moonrays, caught by chance.

Allahabad, the Godly meeting-place
where she merges in the overpowering embrace
of her fair, exuberant sibling of the mountain's origin,

the majestic, vociferous sister, Ganga.

but her dark interior is unsubdued
even as the shadowy waters are reminiscent
of their life as they traversed
over terrains of times past.
Yamuna is hard to reconcile.

Here merging with Ganga,
not a harmony of kindred souls,
more of an enforced meeting of contrary streams.
That's the end of a river , far too early before she reaches the sea.
The boatman plies the vessel as the walls of the fort darken,
lanterns begin to shine,
and you say adieu
An anguished farewell,
as the moon spreads its compassionate light
and takes the body of the river in its fold.

The Sacred Whale

 The Sacred Whale

All through the night,
through the purple and the dark
we were fishing for the sacred whale.
All through the night our boats swayed
on the waves of our black intent,
the intent to kill.
All through the night we heard
the barely audible sound
of the white whale turning blue
and we missed the trail of his song,
straining our ears to hear the song
of the whale singing in the depth of the sea.
Misled by the rage of the hunger
of the dark delight for an overkill
we continued to press our boats
in the storm and did not stop.
The light of the dawn now shines.
It's already late
to look for the lost hours of sleep.

The quivering of something in the sky
has given a new awareness to the song
that we could barely hear in the night.
Our frantic search for the whale
made us deaf to the alien song,
deep and blue
in the midst of our frantic, purple search in the dark.

We are falling asleep in the morn,
straining our ears to hear the song
of the whale singing in the depth of the sea.


Image courtesy Hector Merced

A Walk By The Interior River

A Walk By The Interior River
From the staircase of the University library
to the meadows opening in the sunshine of April
I range over a history
lived inside,
outside of all histories that come and go.
In the few steps measured to the flow of time
I walk by a river, her silent murmur has no history
as I flow with her in these lawns I had left far behind
only to revisit in a need for rediscovering time.
This river that flows and becomes me, an interior of a shadow
inside a grove, where choice has no more relevance in its silent gorge
than a last pebble thrown , creating a ripple,
and lost, not knowing how long ago.
This river silent, self-reflective,
her history merging with all
unknown lives, lived and immersed and carried to the sea.
I may need a bridge to cross
but the river has no need for one.
She teaches me the irrelevance
of histories written, a mockery of her majestic flow.
She lives her own biography,
drenching every page with water born of some sluice that danced
in the wilderness all its own.
Here after all I know
that sound is born of silence and the river is of space too,
a space she must make
all by herself and for herself alone.
Here as I come to her shores,
paths and roads stop all of a sudden
and time passes by them
into all the places I travelled before.
Here by the shore of this interior river all I know as God
floats like a castle in the air, seeming real and intangible.
Something tells me that temples are not made by kings  and labor
of human hands
but by prayers of pilgrims
and colleges are not made by donations of potentates
but by the leap and the aura of light within.
The archways and the spacious halls
of these places of learning
where boys and girls in the prime of life
are making waves and weaving dreams
that a better world be ambled in their space of life.
A river is a river that lives and flows soundlessly,
on the pulse of giving and weaving dreams

The Sweep

Image:  courtesy Kostas Michalis

The Sweep

The sweep of the road and the sky,
a canopy screening the space,
and you with a bike hurrying along
to catch the sound of the night.
The hissing of the wind and the sky that cracked
with a lightening flash across your path.
I know somewhere in my heart
that the time is now  to wish no more
than the hearth and the warmth

I can guess no more the wandering thoughts
that come to a traveller on a cold night.
The warmth of a hearth and a little sunshine
are all in the kit that I give you tonight.

Alone

Alone
 Up around the bend,
and then at the peak,
you know you are isolate.
Bridges are not made
of girders and stone;
they are mere suspensions,
temporary, swaying
like rope-bridges
over green and gurgling space.
That's the ultimate and the awesome,
the real ultimate that forces upon your breath, your lungs and the air you breathe,
in the rarified heights of the mountains
condemned to the knowledge that you are not separate but one
with the breath that pulsates and and lifts you alone,
and yet not alone.
The Ultimate leaves no space for the 'Alone'.

A Transposition

A Transposition

Rested in your words
I begin to breathe
again.
Love like breathing
is a biological need,
though of the body,
living its life in the breath beyond the breath,
love finding the life in words,
not uttered,
a hidden wisdom, a touch of sorrow that is lit
by something that begins in
somewhere of a far origin.
Simple and whole, a single world when in need,
and once fulfilled, breaking the reins and breaking free
of all that the need recalls
of its holding and clinging and the desperation of the fever that would not leave, shouting to the very skies with thirst.

This calm that follows
spreads over all:
the troubles and strifes,
the imaginary empires won and lost
behind screens of smoke
and once fulfilled, breaking the reins and breaking free
of all that the need recalls
of its holding and clinging and the desperation of the fever that would not leave, shouting to the very skies with thirst.

This calm that follows
spreads over all:
the troubles and strifes,
the imaginary empires won and lost
behind screens of smoke.
Not a trace left behind.
Encircled fortresses, gates forced open
to the battles within,
everything still
after the rains.
Seen like a city
now in a mirror,
was it really what was seen?
A splendid rose cut from the stem,
why do I still recall
the pain and the hurt when neither the thorn nor the body of the rose remain?
This calm, this silence,
all unknown,
yet holds a secret deeper than the rose .
The mystery holds.
The silence holds.
I dare not open the heart of this silence.
This ancient quest lands at the shrine unknown
and returns to a deep sea all unknown..

Intoxication; A Ghazal

A Ghazal of Mir Taqui Mir in translation

Excuse Me Friends, I Am Intoxicated.

If I falter in my step,
just this day, if you can,
bear with me and carry me where i started to go.
Carry me the way you will carry
a glass of wine filled to the brim, gently, lightly,
for today I may spill over
with the slightest jerk of the hand.
Walk with me a few steps on this road if you can.
I know, I am out of step with you today.
But just this day, overlook my faults, if you can.
You know best when I overstep.
If I ask for more,
hand me on
an empty glass

hand me on


Image: Sameer Koul
 

The Heart of a Monster

The Heart of a Monster

Always wanting to talk
about the heart
of a monster,
I decided to walk with one, talk with one.
We walked through a desert,
through a dust-storm,
I expected a barrage of curse and slang.
He was quiet, an unending calm
while the storm raged and passed away.
I looked at him sideways,
hoping to have a glimpse of his heart.
He said nothing;
fell on his knees and raised his hands,
and cried in a bitterness that felt like love,
the fiercest cry and the bitterest love I ever saw.

Image courtesy                冯晨

Standing at the end of the bridge
we stood
suspended in the moment of anger
that parting must come as the inevitable end.
Though no surprise,
we stand at the end of the road, end of the bridge, the end that finally has to come,
to all the best cameraderie of the worlds we build and leave behind.
You held me lightly like a parasol in your hand
and I let your touch caress and gently part
with the fingertips still following the marks
of the caress that would not leave.
I know, the next moment I am going to fly as you let me go
like the parasol held lightly in your hand.
Is it the joy or is it the fear
as the parasol drifts on the wind
from a high cliff towards a sky?
A gentle fall, a gentle way
to let one go
to the gentle freedom of the blue.
And suddenly I turn and cling to you,
every limb resisting the rift,
every desire holding back the drift,
back from the onward tide.
and I could swim backward to the beginning of all times.
And there in that moment time stopped, the currents ceased;
That was the final stroke of destiny
when all we saw was eternity.
I never knew a desire so mighty could turn a tide

Turning

Standing at the end of the bridge
we stood
suspended in the moment of anger
that parting must come as the inevitable end.
Though no surprise,
we stand at the end of the road, end of the bridge, the end that finally has to come,
to all the best cameraderies of the worlds we build and leave behind.
You held me lightly like a parasol in your hand
and I let your touch caress and gently part
with the fingertips still following the marks
of the caress that would not leave.
I know, the next moment I am going to fly as you let me go
like the parasol held lightly in your hand.
Is it the joy or is it the fear
as the parasol drifts on the wind
from a high cliff towards a sky?
A gentle fall, a gentle way
to let one go
to the gentle freedom of the blue.
And suddenly I turn and cling to you,
every limb resisting the rift,
every desire holding back the drift,
back from the onward tide.
I never knew a desire so mighty could turn a tide
and I could swim backward to the beginning of all times.
And there in that moment time stopped, the currents ceased;
That was the final stroke of destiny
when all we saw was eternity.

The Sunflower Blossoms

The Sunflower Blossoms

Into the light
the sunflower blossoms,
breaks from the stem and leaps in the sky.
The landscapes stir into a song.
From silence to silence the songs move and fade.
The moments of peace are born
out of the darkness spent with the whispering night.
The darkness and the light create
a horizon: a distance where the embedded silence begins to speak.
A revival , a happening, an event
on the the farthest margin of the dream.

Image: Courtesy Gela Smichdt

An Encounter with Shiva

An Encounter with Shiva

It's just a little quiet,
no, not gloom; this solitude could come any time of the day.
The best time perhaps was the noon
when ravens are peaceful on the trees
and it's a pleasure to hear them sing
freakishly happy with their murky songs
which they polish and transmit, like a military band.
But evening was perhaps better spent alone.
Just a little quiet, not gloom,
just enough silence to pay heed to the wave of panic sweeping over the world of ravens and crows, frantic calls flying over the stretch of the sky,
the primitive darkness settles over all;
distinctions merge in the embrace of night.

The day will end soon and with it the light
will fade into gloom,
a tremor will be heard not far from the heart
in the memory of those I loved and lost.
Unreal shadows ripple in the dark
and riding the wave of the dark
will come the ambient smells
which the cold winds carry.

A tremor stirs and dissolves in the heart.
Never do I want to yield again
to the storms forgotten and rested in the pitch dark
of the vaults of oblivion.

Tricksters of Time, Coyotes hiding
in the dark beaches,
have mercy and leave me alone.
Let me sink slowly
in the ripples, not waves and tides.

The banks are empty where I stand,
without a language to give a touch of warmth .
The loneliness speaks once again,
and this time it laughs a laugh of the wilderness.
The Shiva speaks with his Third Eye open,
a gaze, a ray shooting out of the dark,
and I tremble and shiver under its infinite splendor,
blinding and leading with a hand not gentle,
admonishing  and straightening my bewildered heart.

The Secret of the Moon

The Secret of the Moon

As the sleep descends you will see
the bright star shining above-
a six pointed star shimmering behind
a magnificent star-dusted tree.
That's the sign, you are in the temple.
Be aware of the floors and the walls.
They are the fire that does not scorch.
The spiral path goes up all the way,
till the senses drown;
leaving you neither up nor down,
in a sheer movement that leads to the crown.
Not a lonely ascension of the wilderness!
This is the way the saintly souls
have travelled all the ways, but never alone.
You too, my love will not be alone.
My spirit will accompany thee.
You will feel me right; you will feel me left.
The currents know how to lead
gently upward once you yield
to the momentum of the spirit that lives within.
Float gently on the rhythm of the breath,
light as a feather and free as the heart of the breeze.
Breathe in the stillness and the peace within;
that's the secret of opening the gate.

untitled yet

Untitled Yet

The blue sky hides you and the mountains shield you,
and when the sky whispers the sign
the mountains blush and withhold the secret
of your presence, the secret the mountains hide
even from the gentle sky.
Your presence, bodiless, has pervaded all.
and yet you play truant to my restless soul,
agonized by your absence, your withdrawal
from the world I see , hear , feel and touch.
My beloved, I need to see you with my physical eye,
though sages for aeons have seen you with their third eye
and have fallen since then
into a silence of everlasting peace.
But I am no saint, nor am I a sage of yore.
I have clothed you in garments blue,
stealing their color from the sky.
I was dazzled by the fiery spirit
staring through the eyes of the mid-day sun; I saw you staring at me;
and the noonday lost its shadow in the lee.
The cool breeze caressed me
and I knew; it was scented by your breath.
The magic chant of an unknown origin
comes riding on the crest of a tide;
fills me with a rapture and I swoon,
I dip my hands and feel
my body in the swirling embrace of your quiet being.
I am overwhelmed. The oceanic infinity leaves no trace behind
of my separate, forlorn identity.
I am a being with no body; it's the eternal ocean and no me
anywhere in that infinity.
An ocean with neither a shore nor a horizon anywhere seen.
There I have lost the rein of thought.
A silence and you and me,
and an endless dialogue without a sound.
The burden I carried so long,
my heart, my mind and breath,
when did it ever belong to me?
Let it now go where it belonged;
let me sink and drown
never to come back again
to the world of sensory delight.
This enchanted hour will not stay,
and before its magic dissolves
let me hold its ethereal hand.
I yearn withe this restless longing in my heart;
I yearn to go where my beloved abides,
in his silent abode.
He has waited long
with the patience of his divinely gentle heart,
a sorrowless,  joyous heart,
the heart that beats for me alone.
Gentle breeze, clear the way that leads to Him.
At last the mist dissolved, the road is now unveiled ,
and I can see where it ends.
Let nothing now hold me back.
My Beloved has waited long.