The evening song of the boatman
rowing into the sunset,
mingles with the waves,
sailing past mausoleums and mansions
long deserted by the banks.
In a moon beam's flash, to the slow beat,
come alive the pasts that
play out by the stars
wading through the skies:
bedecked women of the household,
servants in toe, about the courtyard,
children frolic as feasts are announced
and the nights of splendour where
music and magic become one;
In the flutter of rain,
pigeons hide, and bats, in corners
where heirlooms were locked precious
through generations; unknown
then, the hovel of a hermit
is thronged by the thousands whose name
now mingles with those of the Gods
for a glimpse into whispers past time;
It is the beauty of the tree that bares
her soul in winter offerings to the Earth;
Of the stream that offers oblations
shivering through moonless nights;

एक हमारा सत्य परस्पर, जो
रहस्य बन छिपा रहता है जीवन भर

This is our one mutual truth, friend,
that remains hidden a mystery all life:

खेलते रहते हैं  हम, टालते,
कसरती मेहनती हैं, कसरातों
महनतों में खोए रहतें हैं हम

we are busy playing, postponing
the question, and we are workers,
we remain immersed in our
efforts and struggles all life

पर कभी कभी, कल और आज
तक का हो सकता है अंतर, कि
'मित्र' बोलने का नही मिलता अवसर

but a day comes, when the difference
is but between the morrow, and
there's no time to even call out 'friend'

आ जाता है वो बुलावा, तो
व्यूह में फस कभी
लौट नहीं पाते,

when the call comes, so caught
up we become, that return
is not an option from the maelstrom

अचानक सा वो दिन आ जाता
है जब आ सामने उभर कर

suddenly, that we have kept hidden,
comes alive emerging from shadows

ये है जो हमारा सत्य परस्पर,
रहस्य बन रहता है जो जीवन भर

This our mutual truth, that
remains hidden a mystery all life.

A chant echoing in the distance:

fragrance wafting across, rising,

spreading like the birds at dawn

far into the horizon blue:

measuring in its sweep,

the shaman dance of the seasons,

rhythmically erratic,

the drum beat that is the beginning

and the end, a comet search from beyond,

seeking death in the shadows,

like the prayers of stars spreading across

the spiral arms of galaxies

through ages beyond number, too large

for our infant eye to stand witness,

a lighted lamp in loving supplication

at the closed gates of an ancient temple,

waiting to behold the beloved again,

a flame lighting the gulf into an abyss.

I didnt know when you'd speak
why I'd feel as if,
now and then,
your voice was going muffled,
as in a flawed
television transmission?
I thought I must have been
imagining it all up;
Living out some
invisible, subterranean pain.
But, I see now:
you were a phantom;
You were never really there.
I must have
pinched myself harder

Mr. K leads a normal life. Wife and kids, school,
home in town, commuting to work, mornings
for breakfast, evenings papers, chatting away;
The clerk in the government office, executive
in the tech firm; The teacher at the university,
official at the ministry. Like the sun in many
pots, Mr. K is one person living in many bodies.

In the morning, he worships the Eye in his shrine.
Upholding traditions, one must get ahead in life.
Half-believing, within  'Bounds of reason' tepid.
The Eye sits observing him: sometimes, staring
from the sky above, and some times, through
the eyes of the beggars lining the temple street.
Irāvāṇ laughs as Mr. K walks past the totem pole.

'Bad' is always elsewhere, in the nebulous 'other';
Cutting corners is not bad, just an expedient.
Does the Eye only observe silently? It also slithers
sometimes and shakes the fabric of Mr. K's life.
Like when the mountains break way for the river.
But one K. dies, and another takes over. And so
it goes on. Irāvāṇ is laughing impaled on the pole.

Of long an aspiration, secret, that rosaries
don't quench, unexpressed, wells of old,
that anguish burning the deserts, seeking
in austerities and exegeses, an assurance
in tablets and tabernacles, and mourning
the star shooting empty in the sky at night:

a love protects vast, even when what Is
is not this that we worship, and descends
grace, ordinary so to seem obscure, that
wisdom from far must fathom its depths.

Refuse we to believe so, that say who our
father is divine, that so are we too divine.

That which we seek enduring past our
graves, holding dear in our fists clenched,
through torments and tempests and
tenements and temperaments, can
smile at us too as a babe in a manger,

that the King we expect who, to deliver
us from affliction, can a simpleton be,
a Tekton among us: that the Levi and
the Cohen, are risen too amongst us:

and to love, no birth high nor needed is
the learning in law, but to feel as show
those sisters with the heart, who anoint
him in myrrh and in tears, his feet wash.

Like the rainbow shooting out of the horizon:
a whole palette of colours emerges,
carrying in her wings,
all the embers
of the late monsoon -

a side glance, bass strummed of the heart;
Her dimpled smile, drumbeat, missed.
brass, sax, crossing paths,
leaping on a trampoline,
the ***** shrill.

O my towering folly, that
stands mourning like a lighthouse
with the gulls by the rough sea.

All the tones come alive hidden
in this song that like amber
held a slice of that time
in her depths,

screen covered in mist, as now a car pulls over:
clearing it as in a Mandarin Ai, a hut
and some jagged lines: glimpses,
of that dimpled smile -
and a whole jazz band comes alive.