Dhangda's Love Songs
   

On the hill's sloping ground
I asked you to give me love, dreams,
A touch, tobacco leaves.
And you said : Here there are only
the harvesting men.
Not here.

In the twilight dark,
at the place where the village
now begins to be restless
with the scent of mahula,
I asked for your affection, your body;
Or else, just give your word , I said.
And you said : I'm always afraid of
the fireflies and the lovely stars;
it is better that we leave this solitary place.

Inside the forest , when
the beating of the heart could be heard,
I asked for your love, your touch.
And you said : Oh, no! here there is just
the pale grey earth. Wouldn't this
flower-like body , this pure
unblemished soul , turn earth-pale?
Not here, not here!
Beside the rivulet, there was no one,
just the lone bird that sang.
I asked for your touch , for darkness.
And you said : On the rivulet's clear mirror
everything is seen.
Not here, not here.

The whole world had dropped off to sleep,
even the moon and the stars,
I asked for your touch , asked for life,
and for my helpless , shivering soul, begged for
a small place in the nest of your body.
And you said : Even in the dark , inside
your eye's mirror , everything is clearly seen.
Not now, not now.

Plucking out my eyes, I give them
to you , like a lotus-gift . Take them.
And now give me the touch , the love , the dark,
give my lonely soul its much needed shelter.

Grandmother

The matchbox- bus full of passengers
like matches , the uneven road,
the drizzling rain, the crossing of rivers,
the narrow path between crop fields
full of crabs and dead snails:
it was already twilight when we arrived
after going through all this.
She used to say : Even the God of Death
reaches our village struggling , and late.

Everything was over , it was too late.
The pallbearers had arranged everything.
Her second long journey was about to start.
She had journeyed once before -
a shy, tamarind -coloured bride on a bullock cart
leaving her father's house for ours.

" I've become an eroded shore.
Do come sometime, my son,
I might not be able to see you at all , who knows?"
The tree at the floodwater's edge slips,
is swept along helpless in the blinding current,
where is the need for sound or noise ?

In the innermost room I lifted the white sheet
and peered into history's face:
as vast as the sky, dumb as the earth.
Once more silence heaved a deep sigh.

Night, the crickets singing , the glowworms
winking in the bamboo forest ; in the dark sky
a few stars glimmering.
Everyone had departed after eating
the traditional neem - bitter food
Shadows danced on
the cowdung- washed walls.

His face to the wall , his back to us,
father wept. That
was the first time that I saw him weep.
What could I have said to console him ?
Walking out of the house , I merely
looked up at the sky where
she had become another star.

That day I realised for the first time
how every weeping act in this life
is performed in a hidden way, secretly.