Ajmer Rode

- for Michael Wiegers



If you can find
a path into it
there is enough
space in this particle
to stroll for a lifetime.

Translated by the author
...

The baby
just born into this
world has been greeted well
and well taken care of.
Already a variety of
labels have been
etched on him.
One for race.
One for color.
One for religion, and maybe
one for a caste too.
At the same time he
is told
you are born into a free world
Congratulations!

The baby smiles and
accepts everything in
good faith.

One day when he grows
into a boy and the boy
into man it will suddenly
dawn on him:
nobody knows me
but the labels.

Translated by the author
...

Try a redhot coal on your palm
your hand may not burn
The sun that rose faithfully
for a billion years
may not rise tomorrow
The table in front of you
stuck by gravitation
may fly to the ceiling
any moment.

Absurd?
Maybe
but my imagination has refused
to circle the sun forever.

No, not impossible
to defy Nature, much less man.
Try a redhot coal on your palm.

Translated by the author
...

Human mind
is essentially qualitative.
As you know
we are easily excited by
pinks and purples
triangles and circles
and we endlessly argue
over true and false
right and wrong.

But the quantitative
rarely touches our soul.

Numbers were invented mainly
by men to trick each other.
Women likely
had nothing to do with them; they
had more vital tasks, survival for example,
at hand.

Yes, numbers are often shunned
by our souls
but playing with big numbers
could be real fun.
Say if I were to sit on a gravel pit and
count one billion pebbles non-stop
it will take me some 14 years.
or if I were to count what Africa
owes to rich foreigners - some 200 billion
dollars (more infact) - it is impossible.
I will have to
be born 40 times and do nothing
but keep counting 24 hours.

Although things could be simpler on a
smaller scale. Suppose as a result
of the debt, five million children die
every year, as in fact they do,
and each dying child cries
a minimum of 100 times a day
there would be a trillion cries
floating around
in the atmosphere just over a
period of five years.
Remember a sound wave once
generated never ceases to exist
in one form or the other,
and never escapes the atmosphere.

Now one fine morning, even if
one of these cries suddenly hits
you, it will shatter your soul into
a billion pieces. It will take
14 years to gather
the pieces and put them back
into one piece.

On the other hand, may be all the
trillion cries could hit your soul
and nothing would happen.

Translated by the author
...

If you have forgotten
your recent dream don't worry.
I saw it with my eyes.

The figure that stood before you
with a bunch of white roses was
not me

The arm that wrapped around your waist
tenderly
was not mine

The umbrella that suddenly escaped from
your hand and disappeared in the sky
was me

leaving you free
and naked in the rain
to walk laugh run and slip before you wake.

Translated by the author
...

There was no temple around
and he didn't miss one
Father simply bowed
in the open and started working.

Every year he sowed wheat
in the dark brown soil
of his fields

Before he buried the first seed
for his family
he took a fistful
scattered it and said
grow for the birds.

The second he scattered
for the wild animals, and the third
for the travelers who might
pass by and want to
nibble raw grains

As he started
pouring the seed behind the plowshare
pulled by a pair of white oxen
I walked beside him
captivated by the opening and
closing of the furrow.
Present and past happening
in the same instant.

Later when he
moved to the Fraser Valley farms
of British Columbia
he picked blueberries
Sometimes
he paused took a fistful
of the fruit
hurled in the air and uttered,
this one for birds.

a whole bunch of song birds
ran riot in his head.
Beaks blue with half eaten berries.
...

It was the first time
I made coffee in a clear glass mug.
It was fun
and a bargain.
The gray coffee beans I bought
were absolutely fresh,
fragrant,
and cheap.
I poured the boiling water with all
its bubbles, sounds, and hisses
into the mug.
No color yet.

I put in a sugar cube
and couldn't resist watching
the cube slowly dissolve and turn
into an irregular shape.
Sweetness traveled
to every molecule of water without
muddying it,
like an affectionate touch of
a child's hand traveling to every
corner of grandfather's soul.
It was beautiful.

I dropped in a few beans of
roasted coffee.
Light brown color emerged,
turning slightly darker around
the beans.
To my delight a display of
Grey shades began. The infinite
variety of shades between
black and white fascinated me.

A stem of color rose in
the center, branching irregularly
here and there.
There were shapes like flowers,
and thick dots like coffee fruit.
It was indeed a branch of
Arabian coffee with flowers
and seeds.

Soon more color rose from
the bottom, adding richness and
expression to the plant.
I added a few drops of rum at the
side to make it a coffee royal.
The plant trembled, and
strangely enough
it now looked like a human figure.

Was it a coffee picker
from India or somewhere?
It indeed was a coffee picker
with reed thin legs,
a loin cloth, no shirt and no waist.
(The likes of which you see
sometimes on tv to evoke sympathies
in the would-be donors)
I picked up the mug and had a
small sip. Curiously enough the
coffee picker was still there
although slightly thinner. After
another sip the figure was
still recognizable.

Shall I swallow it?
Why not. I smiled.
If those burger sellers can make
baby faces on the burgers and then
lure my children to eat them, why not?
Children, after all, are much more
tender hearted.

The thought suddenly made me
upset. What are they doing to our
children?

Still engrossed in the baby faces
and burgers I picked the mug to finish
the remaining coffee.
What am I doing to the coffee
picker?
...

Horse and I
ride each other

I saddle the horse
pat and
gallop him straight
to that spring.
The horse turns red
turns purple
turns blue.
Suddenly I fall

The horse gets me up
licks, saddles and
rides me unbridled.
I make poems
I sing
I run wild
suddenly the horse falls

I get him up
pat
saddle
and gallop him straight
to that spring.
...

Kalli followed me eight miles
to the market where
animals were traded like slaves.
Cows goats bullocks camels

Kalli was black beautiful and six
prime age for a water buffalo.
She was dry. Repelled bulls as if she had
decided never to go green.

Hard to afford, my father decided
to sell her.
She obeyed as I led her
by the steel chain, one end in my hand

the other round her neck.
I was fifteen. Her nervousness was over
soon after we entered the market
where sellers occupied

their given spaces like matrimonials
on a large weekly page.
Kalli sat down with no emotion in her eyes
like an ascetic close to nirvana.

I sat stood walked around like a
neglected calf. Nobody bought Kalli.
She followed me 8 miles back home

I wasn't sure if Father was sad
or glad to see her back. He just
looked at her like a family member
who had missed the train.
...

Knock gently
when you reach the cottage
of my soul.
The door shall fling open
a flood of light shall
wash your tired feet.
...

Father meditated with feet
in a pan of warm water
before sleep every evening
He never expected my mother
who brought him the water
to kneel.

Rather than wash in hurry
he wanted his feet left alone
let the dust particles loosen
as he quietly thanked
his feet and a supreme being
he vaguely believed in

Dislodging particles
spawned sensations
he could experience no other way
Not even from the touch
of Mother's caring hands
Slowly his feet calmed
forgetting the bare-soled work
in the rugged fields
where I sometimes
joined him to help end the day

Meditation must start
in the head said Hegel
Head is where the mind is
and mind is where
impure spirit waits healing.

Father had never heard of Hegel
and his dialectics
striving toward spiritual perfection
Nor of guru Patanjali
who said
your body is your mind
stretched into bone and flesh.
It matters little
where you start the meditation

Father simply dipped his feet
in warm water
every evening.
...

If you see an old man sitting alone
at the bus stop and wonder who he is
I can tell you.
He is my father.
He is not waiting for a bus or a friend
nor is he taking a brief rest before
resuming his walk.
He doesn't intend to shop in the
nearby stores either
he is just sitting there on the bench.

Occasionally he smiles and talks.
No one listens.
No body is interested.
And he doesn't seem to care
if someone listens or not.

A stream of cars, buses, and people
flows on the road.
A river of images, metaphors and
similes flows through his head.
When everything stops
at the traffic lights it is midnight
back in his village. Morning starts
when lights turn green.
When someone honks his neighbor's
dog barks.

When a yellow car passes by
a thousand mustard flowers
bloom in his head.

A tall man passes with his shadow
vanishing behind him. My father
thinks of Pauli who left his village
for Malaya and
never came back. A smile appears
on his lips and disappears.

When nothing interesting seems to
happen he starts talking again:
where were you born, and where
have you come?
Shall you ever go back?
It is all destiny, yes a play of
destiny, you see.
He muses
and nods his head:
and where will you die my dear?

The thought of death is most
interesting and lingers on
He stops talking and thinks of the
Fraser Street chapel where he
has attended many funerals:
He thinks about the black
and red decorations and
imagines himself resting peacefully,
a line of people
passing by looking at him
for the last time.
His eyes are lit. Perhaps
this is the image he enjoys most
before it is demolished
with the rude arrival of a bus.

Passengers get down and
walk away briskly like ants.
The bus leaves.
He looks
at the traffic again to see
if a yellow car is passing by.
...

Once she dreamed she was Mileva,
the long haired Serbian girl
who married Albert Einstein. She
quietly watched when Einstein twisted
the absolutely
flat space with his hands.
She watched
when Einstein broke the absolute
flow of time into pieces and
spun them around at different
speeds.

She was there when Einstein
reconstructed the shattered universe.
As he became greater and greater
he grew modest and tender.
When finally the world came to
touch his hands
Mileva smiled and left.
She said she still liked to live
in her own absolute space
and move at her own pace.

Once she dreamed she was
Francis Gilot.
the young woman who married
Pablo Picasso.
She saw Picasso with the tip of
his brush
tear apart the calm, surrounding
the objects on his canvas.
She saw faces turning into cubes
and cones.
When Picasso was engulfed
in cubes of fame
Gilot left.
She said she wouldn't become a cube.

Then she dreamed of Jeanny,
who married Karl Marx.
Jeanny read stories to her
hungry children
as Marx fed the hungry of the
world in his imagination.
As his beard curled more and more,
Jeanny saw Marx grow into a
prophet trying to unseat the lords.
When infuriated gods came
upon him Jeanny stood at the door,
wondering.

Last night she dreamt nothing.
The man she married
had quietly disappeared.
She says he was confused, depressed
and needed care.
A sad vacuum expanded in her
and burst.
...

The grey sands
invite me to follow the
receding sea water
to recognize a clam shell
that could be the house
where my ancestors began.
I walk slowly with respect.
...

Take my two hands
make eight feet of them
give them to the spider I
soaked in hot water in
my kitchen sink.

I will hide my arms
in long sleeves, will
finish the last painting with
brush in my teeth
but take my two hands.

If the spider
curled up into
silence, dies
she will weave her next web
in my soul
will travel with me
through all the lives
eighty four thousand
and more.
...

The Maharishi whispers:
the flesh is Maya, the lie
the soul is eternal, the truth.

The baby
inside a starved womb insists
it must come out,
needs more flesh.

The maharishi
and the baby in the womb
stare across
into each other's eyes.
...

I have winged with the flock
that nest
where the crop is good.

Wandered with the yogis
who deep sleep
in a world with thin flesh

Fought along the warriors
who ask
for a glass of sherbet
at the height of the battle

Moved with the eccentrics
who transcend
boundaries of races and colors
roam free on other lands
across the oceans.

On a premature metaphor
I float
sometimes a space age messiah
sometimes a washer man's dog
I become.
...

The old woman
you see peering out of the basement window
is my mother.
She is waiting for Rusty the little dog
who sometimes wanders in
from the street outside.
It doesn't matter if Rusty comes or not.
what matters is the wait that
often extends to the dusk when it slowly joins
the fading shadows on the street.

At midnight Mother suddenly wakes
to chase away the cats fighting under her bed.
The noise disappears before she's up.
Slowly she comes to realize
she is in a small basement room,
not in her wide open village home
where stray dogs, cats, mice
and her own family had equal rights.

Over eighty, she naturally has many
problems, feels her self-respect diminishing.
She struggles not to feel useless.

The other day when I quietly
entered her room
she sat with her eyes closed
and her little book opened in her lap.
Perhaps she was pondering the couplets
of the Ninth Guru she had just read:
worldly relations are all Maya,
creation is but a bubble that rises and bursts
Rama is gone, Ravana gone,
nothing is permanent.
Union with Him is the truth,
the only truth . . .

Her face was aglow
as if a revelation struck.
A smile of confidence parted her lips.

The noise of my steps disturbs her.
She opens her eyes and immediately
looks at me.
Her face with great poise gives into a
mother's face.
The first thing she asks me if I had
enough sleep last night.
She still worries my habit of reading too much.

Then a flood of complaints:
Everyone is so indifferent here,
no one to talk with, children have no time,
TV all English . . .
this year she must go back to Punjab
to see if everything is all right
with our home, she must . . .
But none of the complaints makes it
to her lips.
Her forehead becomes tense, her eyes
struggle to hide wetness.

Slowly she starts talking again
about the woman next door
who is older, wiser,
and who also waits for
little Rusty wandering in the street outside.
...

- ਮਾਇਕਲ ਵੀਗਰਜ਼ ਲਈ



ਕਿਣਕਾ ਹੈ
ਅੰਦਰ ਜਾਣ ਦਾ ਰਾਹ ਲੱਭ ਗਿਆ
ਤਾਂ ਉਮਰ ਭਰ
ਸੈਰ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਕਾਫੀ ਹੈ।
...

ਜਿਸ ਬੱਚੇ ਨੇ ਹੁਣੇ ਹੁਣੇ
ਇਸ ਦੁਨੀਆਂ ਵਿਚ ਜਨਮ ਲਿਆ ਹੈ
ਉਹਦਾ ਨਿਘਾ ਸਵਾਗਤ ਹੋਇਆ ਹੈ
ਸਾਡਾ ਸਮਾਜ ਉਸਦੇ ਭਲੇ ਲਈ ਤਤਪਰ ਹੈ
ਮਿਸਾਲ ਵਜੋਂ
ਕਈ ਕਿਸਮ ਦੇ ਲੇਬਲ ਤਾਂ ਉਸ ਉਤੇ ਲੱਗ
ਵੀ ਗਏ ਹਨ:
ਇਕ ਨਸਲ ਦਾ
ਇਕ ਰੰਗ ਦਾ
ਇਕ ਕੌਮ ਦਾ, ਮਜ੍ਹਬ ਦਾ
ਅਤੇ ਸ਼ਾਇਦ ਇਕ ਜਾਤ ਦਾ ਵੀ।
ਨਾਲ ਹੀ ਬੱਚੇ ਨੂੰ ਦੱਸ ਦਿਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ
ਕਿ ਤੂੰ ਸੁਤੰਤਰ ਦੁਨੀਆਂ ਵਿਚ ਜਨਮ ਲਿਆ ਹੈ
ਬੱਚਾ ਮੁਸਕਰਾਉਂਦਾ ਹੈ
ਅਤੇ ਸਭ ਕੁਝ ਉਤੇ ਸੱਚ ਜਾਣ ਕੇ ਭਰੋਸਾ ਕਰ ਲੈਂਦਾ ਹੈ

ਪਰ ਜਦੋਂ ਉਹ ਬੱਚੇ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਲਕ ਬਣ ਜਾਏਗਾ
ਅਤੇ ਬਾਲਕ ਤੋਂ ਮਨੁਖ
ਇਕ ਦਿਨ ਅਚਾਨਕ ਹੀ ਉਹਨੂੰ
ਸੱਚ ਪਰਗਟ ਹੋਵੇਗਾ
ਕਿ ਉਸਨੂੰ ਤਾਂ ਕੋਈ ਜਾਣਦਾ ਈ ਨਹੀਂ
ਲੋਕ ਤਾਂ ਕੇਵਲ ਉਸ ਤੇ ਲੱਗੇ
ਲੇਬਲ ਹੀ ਜਾਣਦੇ ਹਨ।
...