poems

Don’t worry there’ll still be a lot of suffering For now you have the right to cling to the sleeve of someone’s blunt friendship To be happy is a duty which you neglect A careless user of time you send days like geese to the meadow Don’t worry you’ll die many times until you learn at the very end to love life

You keep waiting for something to happen, the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've put off the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow never quite get to. You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news, the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry, the dishes the job – it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you, scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life. Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way. And then you turn forty. Or fifty. Or sixty...

and some part of you realizes you are not alone and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over, it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when caterpillar turns to butterfly if the pupa is brushed, it will die –

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg it's because the thing is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out. And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that this is what transformation looks like – the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing, until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body, glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

वृक्ष हों भले खड़े, हों घने, हों बड़े, एक पत्र छाँह भी मांग मत! मांग मत! मांग मत! अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ!

तू न थकेगा कभी, तू न थमेगा कभी, तू न मुड़ेगा कभी, कर शपथ! कर शपथ! कर शपथ! अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ!

यह महान दृश्य है, चल रहा मनुष्य है, अश्रु, स्वेद, रक्त से लथ-पथ, लथ-पथ, लथ-पथ, अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ! अग्निपथ!