O GODDESS, VENDOR OF LIBERTY
O goddess, vendor of liberty!
Bind me not in thy boundlessness;
And in the unending path of destiny
Happy be thy unmoving voyage.
Goddess, veiling the Love Eternal,
Come to our mortal land, here bring Heaven's nectar,
To this transient pilgrim life;
O Guide eternal! draw the pause of our tiresomeness.
O Mind of magic!
A stirless stream art thou upon our stilled earth,
As though the sweet enchanted ocean engulfing a golden boat –
O I kiss the Twin Hearts!
THE VIGIL
(A Surrealistic Poem)
Twigs and straws, broken bits, strewn about
in a lumber room – all nettles' teeth.
Shadows, somewhat old and familiar, humming low
make a merry band.
If you have the trump card to flick down,
the whole game would turn right about:
In the blue hibiscus bush of adolescence – Io,
the dumbfounded Sesame!
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THE NET IS CAST
The net is cast and the pool is a drunken
swell and swirl:
Shrunken blackened petals are afloat,
Oh, the children that came down under a curse:
Fortunate are they who remember past lives; here
it is a midnight trap for rats –
If this were all the shelter, the other shelter
would be nowhere.
No more time to lose – whose is the refrain
coming back again and again?
Whose the image looking straight into your eyes
level to level – since when?
Under the rotting weeds they go down
into the depths one by one
Flowerets that grandmother wove into a pattern,
as though with the lightest strokes of a brush!
RUHIRA SHYAM
BARITONE
Let us all move together, one and all,
Together into the cavern of the ribs,
Raise there a song of discordant sounds –
Red and blue and white, kin or alien.
Listen, the groan plays on:
Dreams as if possessed
Swing, like bats on branches;
Is now the time for dance?
Come, let us all move together, one and all.
Let the streams meet in the body, one and all;
Yea, let the bones brighten up still more,
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Let us all go around the fire
And scrape and eat of the very liver of the Muse. . .
Let us go, let us go, let us go one and all.
TO THE MOTHER
21 February 1959
Hold me so to Thy breast, O Mother,
Let aeon after aeon pass,
I'd on Thy bosom, Mother,
Rest my head for e'er.
Closed are all my concerns with life,
Closed are all my dealings with the world,
Renounced are all my desires,
For the celestial sweetness of Thy Love.
Not for me the royal seat,
Not for me ruby and robe,
Nothing, nothing but Thy touch alone
Can fill the thirst of my soul.
Immersed Thou art in bliss,
In the boundless bliss of Thy infinite consciousness,
Hold me, bind me, 0 Mother,
To Thy breast of eternal ecstasy.
DAYS. . . NIGHTS. . . AGES
Days. . . Nights. . . Ages. . .
A shattered mind without solace.
Words. . . tunes. . . rhythms.
What else but sighs of misery.
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Eyes unwinking and tearful
Close at the lashing even of a frown;
Vain lament weeps its winding ways
Only to mock at me.
And yet desires cry out in despair
And hopes rise in life's bosom. . .
The path ahead lies through dust and gale.
I hear afar the breathings of a high flood.
I long for the song of freedom,
But helpless the mind is bound in its own webs
And I follow the tortuous path in front
Through nights. . . ages.
LABANYA PALIT
IN THY NAME
In Thy name the eyes are still dim with tears
And the heavens tremulous with the song of birds.
In Thy name a world of flowers is still in bloom
And on memory's waters spread grey yearnings and illusions.
In Thy name Love lingers still in the bosom
And the wounded heart weeps and laughs in silence.
In Thy name a blue spell still dwells upon life
And eyes in their depths enshrine a mournful dark shadow.
PARIMAL CHAKRABARTY
Page 169
YESTERNIGHT
There passed a storm last night:
A whole forest of trees that grew lush in my mind
Now stand shorn of their leaves
Like rows of skeletons.
Last night a cruel, ruthless storm
Passed by.
Yet in its very wake,
A crescent moon,
Like a necklet
Rose in a corner of the sky.
I gazed at it
And the memory of the storm vanished:
The withered forest of the mind
Bathed in a wondrous light.
The crescent moon, like a necklet . . .
Was it your mouth, was it your eye?
O my far one!
RAMAKRISHNA PRASAD CHATTOPADHYAYA
A FIRE-FLY IS THIS MIND
A fire-fly is this mind,
Now it flares, now it fades;
It must cross the darkness,
So runs about here and there.
As if a needle of light
I t pierces the mighty curtain:
On an edge of the inner being
It weaves a fringe of glimmering consciousness.
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Even like a lightning flash
In this small bit of my sky
That too gleams
Off and on.
A fire-fly is this mind
And I know it will never receive an answer:
Around lies a blind Night, dark, impenetrable
Ever dumb.
Within there as if the spark of a question
This fire-fly of the mind
With no reason blooms and withers.
It vainly believes that all existence hangs on it
As a flower on its stem.
And yet
There is a secret rumour in the darkness
As creation rows along dashing and splashing.
To that measure does this fire-fly of the mind
Glimmer – flare and fade
Seeking an ascension elsewhere
Beyond knowing and unknowing.
PREMENDRA MITRA
ON LOSING
Have you ever lost your way
Mar from marts and paths and cities
in an endless meadow Where with a lone simool
The sky passes its life-long day?
There after a long search for a road
The earth lies down, eyes closed,
Heart reposed,
The lone simool at her head standing silent.
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Tired in the search for a road
Some chance one day to arrive at the meadow,
Amazed they look
About and above.
There where no road exists
Just a trail appears of a new hope,
Where all other ways are lost
One seems to find one's own.
One day, why not, go out and lose your way,
leave your familiar city for the unknown meadow,
There where a lone simool and the sky
Stand and look into each other's eyes.
INTO THE BOAT
Trampling my own shadow
on a long, long path I came
And saw a river of gladness.
I pushed the bank with my left foot
And with the right landed
into the boat.
Here a straw canopy over the head,
A wooden floor to sit upon,
A helm sure and certain,
an oar within reach
And a sail to unfurl in the sky, –
All were there:
A whole lung-full of breath
turned into a flight of pigeons
that found the sky.
PURNENDUPRASAD BHATTACHARYA
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TREMBLINGLY I WAIT
I know not when you may arrive
From behind the light:
The waves may break upon the door
And I shall stretch out my hands In a tremor.
I have lived ages in the embrace of the shade:
Now I do not see the earth's sun
I have made a home of the shade:
I have not seen myself
Mirrored nor in the light, nor in the air
Nor in the water.
Tremblingly I wait:
From behind the screen of light,
Out of my sight, in the pattern of cruel falsehood
I have been used
And for ages I know not myself.
Tremblingly I await:
Just from behind my own self!
TIMELESS
Time and Space endless, seamless the grey ocean,
Then aeons of trance broke into a voiceful play of tossing waves
And last an insentient earth now holds in her womb the seed of
consciousness.
We who have seen a red lotus blazing ceaselessly
And a white lotus ever winkless upon the earth. . .
Do we yet understand? Can we assess the value?
Page 173
Even today the earth is sundered and man goes hungry and
tortured,
Blood burns in pain, life lives barren in the veins;
And still, O Lord, thou hast sent thy messengers time and
again
Who brought with them the legacy of the starry lights. . .
Another hunger, another untamed pain now
Has awakened a sudden mighty restlessness in the roots of
the being!
It is Night's low tide: in the dark we tug the boat on . . .
Sinews we have none, when shall we fly our wings,
when shall the consciousness dawn?
NIGHT COMES BACK
Night comes back again and again, and yet
It goes back again and again, and
The morning sky rings with the quiet and tranquil music of Light.
Sorrow comes back again and again, and yet
Life swells with the billowing ocean of Delight.
Death comes back again and again, and yet
Man's deathless world sings the hymn of Birth.
NIRENDRA LAL CHAKRAVARTI
Page 174
CLOUDS, EVENING AND I
Clouds, evening and I
stand under the sky.
It appears
Daylight is an illusion
And darkness is real:
And I have gone back again into the womb
and effaced the scars of time.
Time here is timelessness.
When you are in its embrace
there is no death nor birth,
You are just a grey notch upon the sky –
Ended the earth's business, vanished the crowd.
SANJOY BHATTACHARYA
MY MIND MUST HAVE YEARNED
My mind must have yearned for some purest white:
That is why one day the sunbright embrace of hills
and clouds left me enchanted –
And I find another light in the light of my eyes.
This is also the whiteness of the soul in its vastness:
It illumines smoothly
the thickened darkness among the stars;
Its silence descends like moonbeams
The whole business of life seems
to possess that alone;
and in the dark cave of the heart it is that I seek,
I seek.
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THE SHADOW OF THE HARBOUR
A dismal shadow upon the harbour,
A broad day in swoon. . .
But you are restive, my beauty! my love!
Wipe then the red mark on your memory,
forget the words of promise. . .
The bank heaves with the rising tide. . .
all's ready for the drift!
Boats and masts and sails and the
bustle and hubbub. . .
And your secret desire and the boundless swell of waters.
I too cast my blood's yearning into the streaming flow. . .
My destiny, the gloomy shadow upon the harbour.
SUNIL KUMAR NANDI
BEYOND SOUND AND LIGHT
Oh, wipe out all the light of the sky,
The whole world of the sun must never be seen
Anywhere.
Kindle the flame of the eye that is turned
Inward –
The darkness in the heart – and see
If it does not grow yet more dark.
And then, the sounds surging mountain-high,
Let them, even like a landslide, hurtle down,
One and all of these shouting particles
Under the shelter of Night's solitude:
Seal up your ears, listen to the stillness
Within the heart, listen
If it is yet more still...
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Silence evermore, solitude evermore,
Darkness evermore –
In my heart shines the light of countless suns
And I shall know if you are there!
DEBIPRASAD MAITRA
A BIT OF LIGHT
A bit of light within my soul,
But more perhaps is there of darkness.
Darkness hides in secret
In the fathomless depths.
A streak from some Dawn
Shall touch one day this soul
And this soul shall rise
Out of the Darkness
And in its body of a flooding fountain
Shall achieve a full-throated cadence.
So shall the Secret be relumed.
My love in the core of my heart
I have borne everywhere around.
You will see every breath
Has left there its imprint –
Oh, you will see there a child
Pure and innocent
And you will long to clasp it
Within your bosom.
SANJAYA BHATTACHARYA
Page 177
WATER LOTUS
Oh, the deep, the unerring aim:
In a moment you did it, Ocean.
And you knew not even the gift you made. . .
In barren June you brought down the whole monsoon.
Jewels and pearls, emeralds and sapphires,
Summer and autumn, rain and spring,
Dreams and desires and gains, all
All are faint images of inanity.
Towers and arches, columns and corridors
Crumble down, huge abysses fade out:
Decline or fall effaced in a moment.
Alone survives the heaving flatness,
The humid heart seeps with its dripping liquid,
It melts in an ardent embrace, in an unerring gesture!
Into your waters, this water is poured out,
offering all unto the last,
O, the Deep, the Vast, receive within you
This lotus, flower of the water!
NABENDRA CHAKRABARTY
SOBS SWAY NATURE...
Sobs sway Nature. . . whose are the sobs?
In the sky even beyond Sight: drops of pain. . . whose are these?
The blue is mute. . . aeons pass. . . a frozen stillness. . .
Even now here am I, an illusory proxy bird. . .
I write poems picking up the twinkles of stars
as they scatter their hues and shed their petals,
In this dwindling glow of footlights. . .
The shadows sway timidly,
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The darkness stretches hesitant her arms,
Thoughts are a-cold in doubt and fear,
The dense silence of a dark age spreading mist and haze,
A sky of hard concrete.
Termless concepts piled somewhere beyond ken
Pain drips in the blue mute and mystic. . .
Ages past bring down their primal stillness,
The stars make an illegible script on heaven's glowing slate. . .
Who has scribbled this poem unutterable and undecipherable,
Who has written down these unending ideas,
Who has painted this image of the mind, beyond understanding,
An epistle of things secret... a throbbing heart... Stars sleepless.
A sob sways Nature. . . the whole night
Someone is in pain, a muffled and repressed pain.
RABINDRA NATH
STILL I WADE THROUGH
His name is written on the wings of sunlight,
His thought lies a harvest field of autumn. . .
And under the sky of the ending day
Often do I lay down my head
with eyes shadow-bedimmed.
I glide into the sun-flooded waters
And I look for a shade –
No shore anywhere,
I trudge on foot upon dusty roads –
Oh, these roads of our earth.
Shall I find it at last shall I?
In the sun, in the fields, at the end of the day?
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Still I wade through billowing waters –
the unmoving goal in front.
BASABI DUTT A
I CAN LEAVE EVERYTHING
I can leave everything, but not the tree;
May it remain,
Straight and simple, may the tree remain
in my life,
May it remain, remain ever wakeful.
I can leave everything, but not the river; May it remain,
By the side of the tree, may it remain in my life,
I can leave everything, but not the boat; May it remain,
May the boat remain upon the river, remain in my life,
May it remain ever wakeful.
All I can give up, not you, O my pole-star!
You must remain –
Tree and river and boat, when all are swept away
in the black darkness,
Even then, do remain transfixed in the night sky.
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THE CENTRE OF THE BODY
The centre of this body is a sun
with its seven-winged flames.
Burn the strings of the body – the fire is pitiless,
he does not know, if it is soft or hard, high or Iowa scale.
He dissolves in the fiery heat the thin cord that links me
to the earth.
In the heavens of your heart
I am a flying light, a flame bird.
The pair of wings is loosened by the heat –
The body drunk with the black smoke of gold
is sunk in a swoon
Both lie out-stretched, the front veering upward.
The wandering stars in the spaces are in flight,
in flight – out of sight.
The sun has absconded, the moon a handful of ashes.
Draining life to a pale emptiness, a bunch of roses
blooms in the crimson garden of the veins,
The pupil of the eye is torn out, the tired eye-lashes
droop down stilled.
Time trembles with the rise and fall of the breast.
Life with its wings of fire is a soaring light:
Your heavens are a cloudless beauty –
Love and affection, memory and happiness
Are now a cascade of gold-dust, as though
drifting autumn leaves.
UMA DEVl
RAINS COME DOWN
Rains come down in a sudden burst,
Overcasting all the ego-skies,
The destitute traveller turns to penance and solitude:
Yesteryear's accounts are settled and closed.
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Tearing open the heart's poignant secrecy.
Chunks of darkness crash down,
The eye shades within it a splashing stream,
Footprints leave their echoes behind.
A long night stops stilled in pain,
Hard it is to forget even if one wishes to;
It lashes and breaks upon the inner soul –
The promise of a Sunrise.
SISIR BHATTACHARYA
ONE BY ONE I CATCH THE STARS
One by one I catch the stars
And I bring them to touch my body one by one:
They all turn into birds and flyaway.
The stars glow like fire-flies
They come and settle all over my body:
Indeed my body is made of countless stars.
At long last I have found out:
I exist no longer,
Filled with stars, am myself a Star.
Take away the stars and I am no longer in the body,
I leave my star-filled body
And go up into the star-filled sky.
Now I am a heavenly star
Hence I shall become a starry heaven.
JAGADISH CHANDRA DAS
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I AM A SWEET FONDLING
I am a sweet fondling of the Sky,
I condescended to come down upon earth.
Whoever makes a link with me
Creates a link with the sky.
I am a human from the sky treading upon this mud,
At every step my anklets ring through earth's bosom.
Upon the soft breast of earth
I draw the very image of the sky.
With my tinkling anklets on
I walk through the bosom of the earth.
This earth is a stage for me,
I play there a celestial drama –
a true and real drama!
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