Ashok Vajpeyi Poems

Our house lies on the route
the parrots take
to go to the jungle
and to come back from there.

Green lines of countless parrots
go to and fro in the sky above us
and a few of them
even stop to rest on our trees.
We live in the city,
how could we know
from what jungle to what forest
from what daybreak to what workplace
the parrots go every day -

often my daughter and I
place bets
on which flock of parrots
will stop or not stop on our trees.

the parrots don't see us
because their sights are always
trained on the trees and their fruit.

The parrots
turn into a green sky
and cover the earth.
the parrots leave the earth behind
like half-eaten fruit.

My daughter
chases after the parrots,
to save the fruit,
the earth.

In the sky, in the dark
the parrots vanish into the distance.

My daughter is left standing
shining with green
caressing the earth, comforting it.
...

Now when nothing remains between us
except some sadness and regret
and we've forgotten
your anger, your failures
your apprehensions about me,
we can see that
while prestige may be easy to come by
dignity in life only comes with great difficulty.
Life is a miser with dignity
and we've both had delusions of possessing it.

We were able to forget
no insult, whether from gods or devils,
even though such forgetting is natural, even necessary
to get through the struggles of life.
Why did we find
insult more memorable than failure,
perhaps it is a familial failing,
the self-respect of a farmer's son,
the self-deception of a small-town poet.
It's thirty-five years since you left
and I am older now
than you were then.

You never had the time to understand me
and I was always trying to test you:
now when nothing remains between us except some sadness and regret,
if you saw how weary I am you'd feel
that in my wilfulness, in my unwillingness to let an insult pass
I have only emulated you:
the truly sad thing is not
that so many years passed in misunderstanding
but that
in the end I've turned out to be a pale imitation of you
which neither you nor I
ever suspected
or desired.
...

Setting his own pace
Mallikarjun Mansur comes in
late
and marches ahead of time

ahead of a time
that's filled with confusions, riddled with wounds
that's growing more and more inconsequential,
a time that trails him
grovelling
destitute and crippled
begging for alms with outspread hands -
panting

Mallikarjun Mansur
advanced in years but standing tall
leans over
death
keeps a hand on its shoulder
stops and lights a beedi
then starts walking once more towards some new destination

his saintly hands take nothing for themselves
they only give wherever they go
and so he sings his way through the wide world
if god
came this way
he would not be able
to tell himself from Mallikarjun Mansur
...

There's a river mentioned in the Puranas, called Shubhsrava. An ancient river: who knows what unknown forests it flows through. What sort of vegetation grows on its banks, what tributaries come and merge with it. Where is its origin: how small, almost imperceptible. Insubstantial in the beginning. Gradually taking on the shape of a river. Full of water, full of plants, full of fish. Full of sound, and brimming with waves of beauty. A river of childhood: a young river in the abode of ancients. A river untouched by gods. A river untouched by geography. A river of only words. A river made up of words. A river that flows beside the pure and radiant, then disappears. A river called Shubhsrava, yet unnamed. A river held in an infant god's scripture. An impossible river, a hidden, a vanished river. A river in Shubhsrava: a river in every river. Flowing from the Puranas down to these words: a river, Shubhsrava.
...

Two deep red eyes of light
are trained upon the road
that passes close to the darkness
of my home.
In the fog that sleeps upon the lake
someone laughs
a giggling grey laughter.
Over the tops of the dark lines of trees
someone laughs.
The sky become overcast - black
- my home, released from the deep red eyes
emerges and sinks
in the darkness, on the road,
endlessly in the dim yellow light…
...

From a requiem for Kumar Gandharva

The grass growing on the ruin's walls
is a green sign from the earth
that it's time
to return to dust.
Being has a time
has colour
has turns and descents
nonbeing is timeless, colourless.
Time
sitting on a branch of a tree in some garden
nibbles away like a parrot
at being -
in nonbeing, there's not even a footprint of time.
Time knocks
on the door of a house
where no one lives.
Time stands with its begging bowl
outside that door
from which no one will emerge.
There is no time now
no provisions for the journey
no tired feet
no sweat on the brow.
The steps leading to the temple
the final cries of sacrificial animals
the bloody end
of goat song.
In the sunlit darkness of blood
the scream of stone
the call of grass
the cries of greenery.
Being
earth
nonbeing
sky.
...

EVEN THERE,
where
the stretched-out
long and burning hands of iron
are chopped off by the machine
I'll sleep soundly
and without getting caught in a nightmare
as usual.
All your words and gestures may fade
but I'll remember you;
in an endless summer
the sense of seasons will be lost
and yet I'll recognize

those fragrant days
when your fresh youth blooms in my arms.
A deadening noise will be all around
and my heart like melted incandescent iron
will flow towards you
in numberless streams:
and quietly, you will mold it

into happiness.
Then one night
your blood and
your heart and
your love
will grow heavy like the steel
and when I shall call you
from beneath the railway trains
calling people and coal
from behind the lamp posts
keeping watch over tranquil towns:
the earth will be dumb
like dark and heavy fear;
and the over hanging sky
will be still like death,
my innumerable parts will wait
for you
at the machine-gate.
...

She held a bird
in her hands
rearing to brave
the sky—empty endless blue.

He was an ancient
humpbacked rock
crouching in wait
for them.

He was aflame with desire
The bird with waiting
The sky was there
without desire
waiting for nothing.

He was both simple
and profound.

She was a girl
He a god.

And this is a
poem before
the tragedy.

The sky is
a benevolent but
a greedy poet.
...

The old world of
gods had died before
I was born and
ever since I've listened
to the endings of legends
about the end
of this wonderful world
without understanding
a word without
desiring to save it or
striving to reshape it
to my heart's desire.
I've never cared to
fight for it because
I'm not a warrior because
wars bore me besides
I never learnt to pray.

I know nothing about this
world other than the
unwithered compassion
of my mother and
the unwithered passion
of my lover, I've
never known of anything
else worth knowing
in this world.

But sometimes my innocent
eyes had patience enough to
penetrate the weary wombs
of nights to where
the heavens howled and
the dead gods moaned
in grim compassion.

And sometimes my straw
light soul was potent enough
to show me visions of
shapes and rocks dancing
to the bloodred music of
birth in the
alert daylight.

And now at last
I know that when,
When we all perish in
that inevitable apocalypse
the nearby heap of things will
become quick and human
and our end will
be beautiful for
those heaps of things.
...

A flame bursts
out or the glory
of blood you know
In the midst of
all clamour and quiet
alienation from
things it is
desire—that
single form of prayer
that keeps one's heart
from sinking.
...