Lal Ded Speaks Against Borders
Last night I saw a chinar tree
scream and run.
Its leaves and boughs were trembling;
its roots oozed blood.
It was afraid to look back.
The sky had drowned in the Dal lake;
it was now a river of fire.
A terrible beast with an alligator’s body
and a thousand dragon-faces
emerged from the sparkling lake.
Its eyes sent forth lightning.
Dead infants dangled from its
ten thousand claws.
Wherever the venom
from its forked tongue fell,
brothers began to fight one another
and the saffron and sandalwood tres
withered in the wink of an eye.
The dust-sorm its breath roused
put out the sun and led women astray.
The little boats once filled with lotuses
Now carried the unclaimed dead.
It rained bones.
Siva danced in the lifeless snow
piled up on the ruins.
His drum woke me up.
I sit alone, desolate, my throat
blue with the poison I drank.
Where are those deodar trees
that blossomed all over
the moment I asked them about Shiva?
Saints of the valley, when did
our words ooze away from hearts
like water from unbaked pitchers?
Springs and stars will not talk
to those who believe in borders.
I don’t believe in borders:
Do the grains of sand know
the name of the land where they lie?
The roots of apple trees
reach for one another
under the walls built by man.
Wind, water and roots
work against walls.
Birds snap borderlines
with their sharp wings.
The lines on the map
do not stop even a dry leaf.
Let us be rivers.
I journeyed from earth
to heaven and hell;
I sought no word’s permission.
The flesh remained here;
the soul rode the rainbow.
At times it saw an eagle
torn into halves;
clouds growing horns at times.
Saw Pandavas’ mother gather
firewood in the forest,
Krishna reaching Kalindi
on the back of a mule,
his clothes soiled.
Saw Shiva’s bull plough the field,
Parvati roaming the hills
Shepherding the lands,
Sita singing from a tribal’s hovel.
heard Lava’s laughter
from a tiger’s cave.
I see darkness at noon.
We sit on volcanoes sipping wine,
we dance on the edge of graves.
Perching under the moon
Glistening like Nandi’s eyes
the nightingale told me
blood knows no borders.
It is one’s own blood the
continues to run in another.
When the two touch each other in love
their blood becomes one;
touched with hate
blood flows out screaming.
Even clothes are borders.
So I strip myself to attain my Shiva,
naked like the breeze over the lake.
My lips are wicks that burn,
my breasts, flowers
and my hips incense:
I am an offering.
Ask the peepal and the palash,
the soul has no religion;
nature suckles everything.
The blue sky is
The throat of the Neelkant
I asked the skylark to reveal to me
the meaning of her song before she died.
She just said, the embers will die
if they cease to gleam.
I saw her song being
baked for the hungry.
It climbed the loom for those
Shivering in the cold,
arched itself to form a roof
for the shadeless.
Then I understood
the meaning of prayer.
Each stone became Sambhu.
The cuckoo laid eggs in every vein,
Every nerve became
the string of a santoor.
I danced in the leopard’s cave.
The Word lost its boundaries.
I am a lake
of measureless blue.
Shiva, my shore
of endless green.
No iron curtains, not even hedgerows.
Let rains and deer graze on either side.
Hey, those trying to milk the wooden cow,
arms are meant to hug.
She who has conquered greed
needs no sword;
She who has conquered lust, no veil.
Follow the stone’s way:
it is both pestle and Natraj,
stain it not.
Look here, my throat is
Brahma’s chalice.
A dove and a lion on my shoulders.
I am the childhood of the future,
The badam tree that has seven lives.
I am the alphabet.
I do not believe in borders.
No fortress can stop those
who move from birth to birth.
We were in the past;
We will be in the future.
Infinity is ever fresh,
fresh as well, the moon.
O mind that is ever restless in the body
like a baby on its mother’s lap,
grow from small attachments
to bigger ones,
go to the place
that has no directions.
Consciousness has no borders
outside the senses.
Endless is the sunlight of the jeevanmukta.
Farewell to the vain mornings
where blood-stench blooms
Farewell to the rains of history
that taste of gunpowder.
Come back, vineyards,
come back, my lambs,
sparrows, lotus-ponds:
the Infinite calls
from within the sand grain.
A House of Wounds
I am a house of wounds.
All my rooms are filled with blood.
A drawing room of blood
A kitchen of blood
A dining table of blood
A bedroom of blood.
My walls shrink day by day
Making it impossible even to stand straight
Or lie down and stretch oneself
The passages that lead to me
Are closing one by one;
Those who inhabit me
Have nowhere to go.
No door opens to anywhere.
Walls and barbed wire fences
Squeeze and crush us alive.
Only the tiny bleeding corpses of children
Dead even without a final drop of water
Hang from the olive trees in my compound
In the valley, watered by the tears
Of those who inhabit me.
Arms sprout in the fields
Poisoned by the enemy.
The aggressors’ fire spreads in every direction.
There is no sky, only the smoke of the orphans.
Rain speaks in its ancient language
to the unburied dead.
Nothing remains sacred anymore.
No Prophet’s voice sweetens
The ears of the refugees.
In no eye burns the candle of compassion
There is not even the dream of a star
In the dark sky of terror.
I am a house of wounds in which
Only the screams of the landless resound.
Naked feet dream of wild streams
And pant, longing to return to childhood.
Seated on the back of broken toy-horses
They chant those words, tender with love,
Untainted by blood:
Aleph – Arnab, Baa – Baatha,
Thaa – Thufaahath, Jhaa – Jha a lab
Jeem – Jamalun , Haa – Hisaan…
(Translated from Malayalam by the poet)
Clothes That Bleed
Bleeding clothes
on the riverbank and the seashore ,
at the railway station and the airport,
on the playground and the street,
on the courtyard and the verandah,
in the drawing room and the bedroom,
on the newspaper and the silver screen.
Bleeding clothes,
no one asking whose blood it is.
The survivors say it is not theirs,
they sing and dance and make love,
but the clothes, they run after me
with a dumb stare.
It is Muslim’s blood, says the Hindu,
turning his eyes away, it is the dalit’s blood,
the caste-Hindu averts his face,
the Malayali says it is the Tamilian’s,
the patriot says it is the foreigner’s,
the rulers say it is the rebel’s.
It is woman’s, man washes his hands,
It is beast’s , human being plays the saint,
it is the tree’s, the beast is innocent.
And with each face that turns
In waking and in sleep,
In reading and in thought,
scattering blood, they come, they pile up,
bleeding clothes,
clothes without God.
The Barbarians
We were certain they would come.
We broke the idols of those who
might have stood against them, one by one.
We waited in the capital to welcome them
with goblets brimming with children’s blood.
We removed our clothes to put on barks
set fire to monuments,
propitiated fire for the sacrifices to come ,
changed the names of the royal streets.
Afraid our libraries might provoke them
we razed them to the ground, letting
only the palm leaves inscribed with the mantras
of black magic to survive.
But we did not even know when they came.
For, they had come up, holding aloft
our own idols, saluting our flag,
dressed like we used to be,
carrying our law-books, chanting our slogans,
speaking our tongue, piously touching
the stone steps of the royal assembly.
Only when they began to poison our wells,
rob our kids of their food and
shoot people down accusing them of thinking
did we realise they had ever been
amidst us, within us. Now we
look askance at one another and wonder,
“Are you the barbarian? Are you?”
No answer. We only see the fire spreading
filling our future with smoke and our
language turning into that of death.
Now we wait for our saviour at the city square,
as if it were someone else.
(Remembering CP Cavafy’s famous poem, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’. Translated from Malayalam by the poet.)
