A Balcony, A Bird, A Question Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

At the balcony in the afternoon with a cup of tea, watching birds,
their names unknown, but I love them,
long sharp beaks with a tiny body,
a 'model' bird, agile, alert, flying at a high speed,
they attract me.

Why do they attract me?
Why am I attached to them?
Where does attachment come from?
Did I inherit it?

Questions such as these crowd my mind that, I feel, has no shape,
my mind is in a fluid state, a continuum,
like water, flows, wets,
there you find reflections, attachments,
a fluid mind holds moments, images, memories, even pointless memories.

A question arises out,
why can't I be detached like the tiny bird,
why?
Is it in the acid, deoxyribonucleic?
Where I stand, my legs are,
and far above, the vacuum that we call the sky,
there is nothing that belonged to me when I was born,
yet I feel an attachment to the trees, the roads, men walking, boys and girls returning from schools,
most are unknown yet bound to me through an invisible chain,
if there is an accident, I will stand by them,
the bird will not.

Then the idea of detachment -
on detachment, the ground will not change,
I may move somewhere else,
a new attachment will form.
I look around, I feel.

I agree there is a vacuum, everywhere -
all attachments start from birth and they will extinguish in death,
I know,
all my god and devil are imagination,
all are creations somewhere in the distant past, out of fear, out of the necessity for survival, out of maintaining order, yes, order.
Whose order I don't know, but I know this much,
all of these are conditioning,
you and he and I, all conditioned.

Does habit lead to attachment?
Some invisible chains in my blood?
How do they form?
That is the question.