Ajmer Rode Poems

- 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.
...