SRIRADHA (19)

Come, take half  
of the remainder of my life,  
but fill every moment  
of the half that is mine  
with your infatuation.  
Was the bargain unfair?  
Then leave me with a single moment  
and take away the rest of my life,  
but like the sky,  
fill the whole space  
above that moment.  

No, not like the sky.  
Come closer and become the cloud  
over my past, present and future  
so that, when I touched myself,  
I would touch the monsoon of your body.  
Your sighs would breathe  
the gale spewed by the despair  
of a distant ocean  
and, when I smile  
and touch myself,  
the gale would cease.  

My lifetime,  
unconcerned with its nearing death,  
would everyday renew its pilgrimage  
to the early years of your youth.  
You would exist as a mass of blue  
carved by my command,  
or as the blue total  
of all my known, partly known  
and unknown desires.  
Since I always dress in blue,  
you too must be blue.  
How can you have any other colour when  
it would break my heart  
if you had in colour other than blue?  

Was the bargain unfair?  
Then come, take away  
even that single moment.  
But do not bend down, look straight  
into my eyes.  
Meet there the impudent traveller  
who has passed through hell after hell  
and, at the end of the very last hell,  
stands under a kadamba tree  
and awaits your coming. 
  

Translation :
The Poet 

SRIRADHA (58)

You are the fragrance of rocks,  
the lamentation of each flower,  
the unbearable heat of the moon,  
the icy coolness of the blazing sun,  
the language of my letters to myself,  
the smile with which all despair is borne,  
the millenniums of waiting without a wink of sleep,  
the ultimate futility of all rebellion,  
the exquisite idol made of aspirations,  
the green yesterdays of deserts,  
the monsoon in an apparel of leaves and flowers,  
the illuminated pathway from the clay to the farthest planet,  
the fantastic time that's half-day and half-night,  
the eternity of the sea's brief silence,  
the solace-filled conclusion of incomplete dreams,  
the dishevelled moment of waking up with a start,  
the reluctant star in the sky brightening at dawn,  
the unspoken sentences at farewell,  
the restless wind sentenced to solitary confinement,  
the body of fog seated on a throne,  
the reflection asleep on the river's abysmal bed,  
the undiscovered mine of the most precious jewels,  
the outlines of lunacy engraved on space, and  
the untold story of lightning.  
You have, my dearest, always suffered  
all my inadequacies with a smile.  
I know I am not destined to bring you back once you've left.  
All I can do hereafter, till the last day of my life,  
is to collect the fragments of what you are  
and try to piece them together. 
   
   
Translation :
The Poet   

LINES ADDRESSED TO HER NON-RESIDENT PRESENCE

I had thought  
I had forgotten you entirely.  

And then, one day, I quarrelled  
with everyone—with wife, children,  
with Government and God.  
Before the quarrel ended, I walked away,  
and stood near the window.  
Outside the window  
A moonlit fog extended  
till the world's end.  

You were there, draped in  
Clothes made of the trees and the shurbs  
on the river's banks.  
A smile glimmered  
on you melancholy skin.  
In your eyes there was  
a rain-wet paddy field that never ended.  
Your uncombed hair fluttered in the wind  
like leaves of sugarcane.  
Your mouth, half-open and half-shut,  
stood where all dialogue terminates.  
Your legs rose from the dark depths of dreams.  
Your body shook, and every single letter of your name  
was written in the indelible ink of time past.  

I knew you would leave soon.  
How could you stay  
Unless the time for staying came?  
Wherever you go, a hand raised above shoulders  
can touch the stars.  
The steamer arrives every morning  
to say good morning to women  
who hold entire rivers in their eyes.  
The earth and the outer space are one.  
The eyes of eyes and the ears of ears  
walk about in shaded coconut groves,  
and gods and goddesses stand at your doorsteps  
yearning for morsels of benediction  
flowing from your meditation on yourself.  

After your leave, what remains?  
bare rocks, the moonlight's darkness  
erasing all future,  
several blood-stained years, dead soldiers  
guarding unused gunpower on the sea-bed,  
and the desolate road I must walk on  
till the last day of my life.  

Go, then, with so few days left to me,  
a change in my condition can no longer be  
the subject-matter of hope.  
I now have fever almost everyday,  
nerves from the waist to the heels ache,  
and, if I rise up without proper precaution,  
I feel I am descending into some bottomless depth.  
The skin is loose and dry, the weight  
has fallen, maybe someday now  
my breath will stop somewhere inside the lungs.  
I would have notified all this to you,  
but then, didn't you and I discover long ago  
that news of this kind was utterly useless  
both for you and for me?  
   
   
Translation :
The Poet