A Few Love Poems

This Aching Joy

Ah!

Why is this pain so sweet?

Or am I already turned into a masochist

unawares?

At this moment,

bearing on the shoulders

all the suffering of the world

I am willing to walk uphill to Calvary.

Oh!

Can a joy be so painful?

I am no longer contained in my own self.

O Eyes in search of happiness!

Come to me –

I will give you the diamond beads of tears

blended with my smile.

Ragini,

shall I take them all into my embrace

and reveal the mystery of this aching joy?

Riddled

What is it that I’m possessed by?

At one moment,

I see myself in the gloomy silence

Of a guilty face;

Next moment in elation

I go dancing green leaves on the trees.

Sometimes I am gripped by the graveness

That fills the hall of a condolence meeting.

Sometimes like a fine morning horizon

I keep smiling.

What’s wrong with me?

Now I feel my breath

Choked in my throat,

Now I feel tickled

And released in peals of laughter.

Sometimes I go shrinking in embarrassment,

Sometimes riding on the wings of ecstatic wind

I go around humming a new tune.

o

As you fingered...

As you fingered the earth of my body

a sensation sprouted on it,

started growing quietly

covering the entire field

with its tickling vines

and smooth shiny leaves

while sending roots deep down

into my heart

that throbs whispering – love… love… love…

Walking along the Road

1.

That day

we walked along the ancient road,

as ancient as primeval human emotions

or as the beginning of civilization.

But I was unknowingly overwhelmed

by the fresh smell of stones and earth

as if they were just turned up

as in some road being newly constructed.

Did you not feel so, dear?

2.

Like the spades

digging soft earth rhythmically

our footsteps were falling on the ground,

and standing on the edge of the road,

we scanned the distant hills

and valleys thousands of years old

which but appeared to me

like some exotic land

newly discovered by the Columbus of my eyes.

Did you not feel so, my Love?

o

Those Moments at a Roadside

Seated at the edge of time,

whatever we spoke to each other

was not a talk

between mythical Madhu and Malati.

The words we uttered

were the moments we lived together.

We are very much here,

just like the grass

grown in the crevices of rocks.

Even when someone

sees in them nothing but illusion

how can those moments we lived be any different?

How can the truth we envisioned in them

be replaced?

*

Our unrestrained laughter then

was not for some toothpaste advertisement.

The words we spoke to each other

were not rehearsed for a theatrical play.

With the moments emancipated

from the circumference of a clock

I was far away

from the bazaar of consumerism,

escaped also from the bounds of pragmatism.

I am talking of the trust and confidence

we lived in those moments.

I am afraid

these words may sound absurd to you now!

o

Madhu and Malati: Protagonists of an old popular romantic fantasy.

Disarmed

No, I knew not at all

that I would ever go baring myself

in front of you in this manner

I know not

when I,

one after another,

put off my honour and dignity

and laid them at your feet

Even the Karna-kavach of my self-respect

I have torn off my chest

and handed it to you, smiling

Now I am so disarmed

a prod with your little finger is enough

to make me bleed

o

The Love We Lived

Now, there’s no longer the pain

I had suffered from that wound.

There’s only a fossil of that pain.

Anything can be done with this fossil.

It can even be played like a toy.

Rest assured.

There was a time

when we were in love. Weren’t we?

During that tiny fragment of time

we were lovers.

But falling from the edge of our eyes

to the ground of transience,

that fragment of time disappeared.

Now, I realize –

what happened then had to happen that way.

You dared to throw away

the usualness of everyday affairs 

together with your broken-heeled sandals.

Nowadays,

I too feel like laughing

at the foolish dream

that it would last for all time. 

We rather live many a usualness –

fragment / frag / ment / of usu/ al/ ness/ es!

The moment of love we lived as one

is a truth that lives eternally in our memory.

But our promises were dreams

we saw in our deep sleep.

A moment was there in which

you and I were one single embrace.

On the muddy path of uncertainty

I go stepping on the stones of moments.

I live moment.

Moment!