The Zahir I Met in Love and Delusion

 

It was such a lovely

Monsoon morn,

Fervently poised to pen

My long awaited poem

On love and its delusion,

After such a long hiatus

In a dew drenched sojourn;

But intuition intertwined

With a pair of eyes

Slashed through my

Bleeding heart

Like every other dawn:

All the withered words

In the clouded vision,

Left my empty manuscript

Looking so helplessly forlorn,

With all my self-drawn delusion,

With the severed wings

Of all my flustering imagination-

My zahir played a part though,

Like in a desert,

With the mirage of an ocean.      

 

I left my manuscript too,

Taking resort to the prosaic wanderings along the chameleon clouds over the ridges of a mountain, feeling the droplets of rains passing through my unwinged imagination; but the shrouds never drizzled down. The dawns kept coming on and on… And then I came across a night with a moon…

 

It was such a lovely

Blooming moon,

Weaving beauties

With the wild blue petals

Along a lonely

Secluded lawn;

Echoing couplets

Of a melancholic epic

Floating around

In the ashen blue sky

Of my raining heart.

But, they were all gone,

All on a sudden,

Like a spectrum

In a mid-summer illusion:

Swept away

By a November wind

From the north end.

 

And I knew it’s time to head for the North, for the nomadic way in search of my zahir that I met once in a godforsaken island in one of my dreams; or may be in a devil-may-care inter-section with a parallel dimension. And it’s where the Meghbalika I chanced to have painted got stuck into my wayward imagination. A pilgrimatic expedition is all I need to stop my soul erosion or to find myself back again in the downtown, may be by saying aloud all my untold stories, giving way to the new ones to be sewn. But, the zahir I lost my poem in is my love with all its delusion:

 

Oh Sir, she smiled sometimes

For whatsoever reason

To stir up the whole Pacific Ocean;

Which had nothing to do with me-

But my heart somehow reached

At the centre of the whirlpool

With the fins of my befooling imagination. 

 

Then there was the kind of look:

Could have easily pierced through

The heart of any bohemian fellow

Like the arrows of Apollo;

Which I thought to be meant for mine-

Which I thought to be from Cupid

With a suddenly discovered passion.

 

And sometimes those fireballs from the eyes:

I could easily interpret them to be

The outburst of emotion;

But, never could I imagine

The feelings I dreamt to be reciprocal

Were just the reflection

Mirrored by my own obsession.

 

But I can feel the rain and feel her

Like the flow of a monsoon;

I can keep walking in the drizzling

With a cup of coffee

And some freshly woven dreams,

And I feel her walking by me

Like the flow of a flaming infatuation:

 

That’s how the zahir and the Esther

Keep coming in together;

And I know both the delusion

And the zahir have to disappear

For the love to paint even deeper;

For an unfinished poem to reach a harbour;

For all the blissful pains to savour. 

But the love with all its delusion

Just want to glide on with the lotus-eaters;      

With the zahir and its obsession…

But, it’s time for the nomadic way,

It’s time to rend, and it’s time to sew:

Winters are long, and Ithaca is still far away…

 

© Atique R.

*The poem is inspired by the Paulo Coelho novel, The Zahir.

I Came to This World with an Endless Leisure

 

I was born with all the time of the world-

I’m one such a happy-go-lucky poet;

I’ve bathed my body in the sea,

All alone in the darkness;

I’ve loved the colored sunlight,

I’ve wandered around the weary autumn field,

In the laps of green like a grasshopper.

I’ve seen a teenage girl plucking yellow rhododendron:

Her red wet dress draping her chest,

Echoing a melancholic tune of a conch.

 

The sky in the morn is bloomed

By the flocks of swans: their new songs

Trigger the new dawns-

The pink waves of the river talk a lot-

And they keep murmuring all along;

Yet their words are never devoured by the winter fog.

Someone sitting in the petals of a painted cloud,

Is listening to everything-

Or no one is listening at all;

Everything fades out in the blank mist.

 

I too will be wiped out one day like a spectrum;

And yet I sit on the green grass; fall in love;

Wait in a solitary seclusion for the sounds of footsteps,

With the yearnings of her love; collect the wild plums-

I’m supposed to give them to someone.

One can sit for hours on this soft grass,

Alone, with all such dreams;

And when it will be the time to sleep,

I will close my eyes. 

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ei Prithibite Ami Obosor Niye Sudhu Asiachi,’ by Jibanananda Das.

If I Get an Eternal Life

 

If I get an eternal life,

If I can go on walking alone

On the paths of earth forever,

I will watch how the leaves grow green;

I’ll see how they turn pale and go off the scene;

I’ll behold how the sky becomes white in the dawn,

And is drawn to dusk with a reddish hue on its chest,

Like the blood splash of a slain munia.

I’ll be able to meet the stars, again and again;

I will see an unknown girl going away

With her hair freed from a loosely locked bun:

Her face missing the comely touch of twilight. 

         

If I really get a life without an end,

If I can roam around the roads of the world,

Alone, for eternity-for a time without bend-

I will see countless trams, buses and dust;

I’ll see bunches of slums, huts, swampy lanes,

Broken chillums and urns;

I will see quarrels here and there.

I’ll watch street fights, squint eyes, rotten shrimps-

And countless other things,

I won’t be able to put into words.

And still I won’t be able to see

A glimpse of you

In my eternal life,

Ever again.  

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ononto Jibon Jodi Pai Ami,’ by Jibanananda Das.

If I Were a Wild Swan

 

‘If I Were a Wild Swan’ is a translated poem, with a slight change from the original one (Ami Jodi Hotam) by Jibanananda Das, the pioneer of the modern Bengali poetry, the uncrowned maestro of mind-stunning metaphors: my first love like millions of Bengali readers who like to read a couple of lines from a poem, sometimes in a lonely leisure on a rainy day or on a moon blanched night or in a winter morn or anytime anywhere with a hot cup of tea or without. His works have got an undeniable impact on readers or poetry lovers, avid or nonchalant, who can neither feel nor deny that there is something to be indulged in, there is definitely something to be lost with an outpour felt deep inside in the life on the other end of the reality.

Ami Jodi Hotam (If I Were) was translated into English by the poet himself and was published in the 1945 anthology of Modern Bengali Poems. However; I have never had the opportunity to go through that version of the poem. But, I did dare, may be for my love for the poet and for the imagery, to try my own version with a little change as I didn’t feel like bringing along another swan to be shot down…

 

If I Were a Wild Swan

If I were a wild swan

In a quiet nest,

Deep inside a swamp bush,

Close to a wheat field,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon;

 

On such a night of spring

With the moon rising above the cedar woods,

I would glide along the silvery crops in the sky,

Leaving behind the lure of the maddening smell

Of warm water of the marshes-

 

With my feathers feeling the touches of your wings;

My wings in the beats of your veins-

A million stars glowing the deep blue sky,

Like the golden flowers flaming the wheat field;

With the March Moon looking like a golden egg

In the green furry nest of maple grove.

The sound of a sudden gunshot:

My diagonal fall,

With the joy of ecstatic piston on my back,

And the songs of the north wind in my tone!

 

May be the second gunshot:

My stunned silence,

My peace.

There wouldn’t be the fractions of death anymore

Like the life we are dragging on…

There wouldn’t be any burden of despairs

With the unfulfillment of our little hopes,

There wouldn’t be any darkness, either;

If I were a wild swan,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon,

Close to a wheat field…

 

 

© Atique R.

Dreamversation

 

Can I borrow a couple of your moments,

Before the moon picks up its beaming glow?

Can I ask you something,

Before my winging words lose the courage

And find the floating mist in a hiding flow?

Though, a lot of things I’m dying to know,

But, a few or a couple will be just fine:

You’re so busy, and I’m in such a withering time.

All you need is to respond in just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Sounds so simple, aint’t it? I guess so.

 

I’ve got so many questions getting spiralled,

Squeezing my heart: at least I feel that way.

Do you ever feel choked,

With thousands of questions in a boiling bay;

Tangled and the words severed off their wings,

Before trying to fly out off their death?

And that makes me feel just out of breath…

But, can you please tell me

Before the white dove

Sails past all the seas of lives;

Before a wandering soul

Walks past all his miles..?

 

Suppose, there is no oxygen issue;

But still, you are feeling suffocated for someone,

Someone keeping a deafening silence.

Have you ever experienced anything like this?

Anything that way, in a camouflaged patience?

Do you ever feel

Kind of taking in a breath of peace,

With a long sigh of relief,

Just after seeing someone online,

Just by feeling the virtual presence-

Like discovering an island

After a series of storms

On a troubled sea, in an troubled mind-

And still without texting any single word,

Sharing just nothing,

Nothing but a bunch of frozen sighs?

Unreachable, indeed, but, still something.

 

Do you ever check your WhatsApp account

Just to see the login status of someone else?

Do you ever feel the craziness,

Making you feel like a bubble

With the burden of an unfathomable emptiness?

Have you ever found your feelings got stuck

In a one-way ride to the moon?

I don’t know if you ever feel the way I feel;

For anyone, ever in your dimensional zone?    

 

Have you ever been in a conversation

With someone, without uttering a single word,

For a soul laden with passion,

Breathing so hard to find a catharsis?

Do you believe anything like telekinesis:

Like sending the words from soul to the seas?

I wish I could send you my wingless words too;

Not the feelings, just words,

Millions of words,

As my feelings can hardly be painted with letters.

 

Have you ever talked to someone

Entirely in your imagination?

I call it dreamversation,

That I keep doing in my subconscious mind,

Or may be in my unconsciousness too,

With you: several times a day and at night

In my lonely leisure or whatever,

With the moon rising high

Or hiding somewhere,

With the monsoon rain

Drenching the soul of the earth

And of mine,

Or without it:

 

Without ever thinking the Meghbalika

I see in the canvas of my heart

Belongs to a parallel world,

And I’m just nowhere,

With all my dreamversations

Landing in a nothing-sphere.

 

 

©Atique R.

Death by Thunder on Such a Night

 

I planned it a long ago

To make a voyage with Death

Into a deep blue sea

To give away my breath;

And to brave the dreadful uncertainty,

With a farewell to life and its labyrinth:

May be in the twilight

With the splashes of melting gold

Into the relentless blue,

Ushering in a moon blanched night,

With a derailed drizzle in a dreamy light.

 

But on such a night

With all the shadowed dreams

Floating like a bunch of foamy clouds;

With all those unfinished jobs

Dwindling into the droplets of moon shrouds;

With all those meaningless promises

Hiding in the flow of enchanting jasmine;

With all those maddening night bloomers,

Glowing like fireflies in a starry shine-

Too beautiful to be real in a floating light,

With a nightingale and an aura of taking a flight…

 

But on such a night

After waking up from a beautiful dream

With an intense feeling for one more ride

Into the flow of an eternal stream;

With the blissful drops of a monsoon rain

After a long lingering summer pain,

I feel like walking alone,

Along a river in the rain,

With all my melting memories

Streaming down from the valley of my heart

Into the rivulets of a singing cloudburst…

 

On such a night

The ocean seems to be too far.

The relentless blue

Can be forgotten too

Like many other things for an unreal future.

On such a night

I feel like taking the short surreal sleep

To wake up to eternity.

Just a fraction of a second…

And the night looks so fairer to surrender.

Just a random bohemian thunder…a death by thunder.

 

©Atique R.

One More Reborn

 

Under the new Moon,

As I was flying high

Above the Mediterranean,

I happened to meet

An accident       

With a mountain

Of shrouding clouds

From heaven.

 

I lost the track

In the enchanting trail

Of a familiar smell

That I was mad at, once

A thousand years back.

 

No more blood;

No more sensation

In the radiation of warm flesh

I want now yet another reborn…

 

©Atique R.