CANTO - 11
The lilies open their lips only to speak of
you, the leaves whisper in my ears, your craving
for me.
I spend nights without sleep, staring at the
starry skies, with my heart torn, between you and
my people.
My eyes carry you and my nation, as two
candles in search of my island of hopes; where
my people wander on the sandy beaches in gay
abandon, tear the flesh of fruits with their teeth
and prowl like beautiful wild animals.
where I the storm, fled away from the
oceans take shelter in the coconut groves of your
bosom
Where, my nation, surges like a wave of the
sea which does not carry the load of ships, where
the morning ray does not stab and kill the
population of dreams of my people, where I spread
myself, as enormous green pasture for my country's
children to play and romp.
Let us go there-
Where the roads of my country ramble into flowers
in the month of chaitra, and carry like trains
my people the travelers to great festival.
Let us not sit idle,
let us go and join our great people, with
our sickles, in the festival of harvesting.
* * * *
Once before the jaws of monstrous cities
Swallowed me
I used to relax my limbs on the golden sands of seaside beaches.
And stretch my gaze beyond the restless
Waves of the blue sea.
I used to bathe in the vague sweetness of fancying the objects and lands,
beyond the limits of my visual experience…
is it Rangoon, or Singapore, or Bangkok,
or that large chunk of water, that liquid sapphire, the Pacific,
which is my blue dream flying
In the sky, fallen to the ground, having lost its wings, somewhere suddenly.
Seas are punctuations in the sentence of earth
The running civilizations breath rest a while
When commas, colons, and hyphens interfere in their travels.
They are then introduced to the lands of new shores,
with fresh looks and In fresh garments.
Seas are pots of ink, which the earth uses
To write her romances.
Empires, civilizations, scents of knowledge
Are scribblings, which the winds carry from the seas.
Those ancient winds, light the cities, rule the countries.
And, it is the same ink with which the epics
Of man are written. Time swallows the poems
Written by man, for the health of man.
I ate old poems now, and vomited their
Undigested limbs. Now
My hunger is for the new word.
I knit poems now with the void
Thundering beyond my eyes,
With the blue whispering beyond my seas
With the heights soaring beyond my stars:
With depths in me which my hand
Cannot reach,
With al the material which my
Contemporaries are not familiar with-
Beyond the cities in which I remain
Undigested:
Beyond the forests where my soul hatches
Her yearnings,
Beyond that circular line which binds all
Created things and only the one arc of which is
Visible to human eyes,
And beyond which my third eye, craves to burst:
There waiting for me
My blue, blue sea, lying in wait
For centuries on end..
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem