“Rather why not write a poem yourself – ”
I said with a wan smile; the shadow-mass gave no reply;
I gathered it is after all no poet – but a mounted narrator
On manuscript, commentary, notepad, ink and pen
Enthroned – no poet – unageing, undecaying
Professor; Toothless – helpless mucus-drip from eyes;
Pay a thousand rupees a month – another thousand and a half
Obtainable by picking dead poets’ flesh and worms,
Although these poets food, love, fire’s warmth
Had sought – had thrashed about in the shark’s wave.

We are not yet dead – images incessantly yet are born:
Mohin’s horses graze in the wildernesses of autumn’s moonlight
Stone Age horses as if – still desirous of grass they graze
Upon the weird dynamo of this earth.
Odour of the stable floats in in a crowd of night breeze;
The shedding of sad hay sounds from the steel machine;
The teacup like a tawny kitten – in sleep – in the indistict grasp of a mangy dog –
Turning to ice rattles in yonder pice-restaurant;
The parrafin lantern is snuffed in the circular stable
Blown by Time’s repose –
Having touched the moonlight of these horses’ Neolithic Silence.

Sun-spangled dawn sky, midnight blue
In infinite glory you disclose yourself repeatedly
Beside the helpless city’s prison walls.
Here licks dense smoke’s coil
The furnace’s angry blaze here incessantly burns
Bloody stones in desert’s fiery breath covered,
Mirage-cloaked.
The lives of a countless travellers
Are snuffed searching interminably; find no clue of the path –
Domination’s cruel shackles coiled around their feet.
O unblinking blue, of this prison-house of a hundred thousand rules
Your wizard-rod has broken the spell!
Solitary midst the multitude-rush I muse
In which distant magic kingdom’s enchantment wrapped
Into the blood-embankment of the mundane have you arrived, alone –
In crystal light outspread your robe of blue –
Voiceless dream-peacock wing!
Erased from my eye the hunter-pierced earth’s blood-calligraphy,
Awakens within the self-rapt sky’s golden(1) flame!
Earth’s tear-pale heated(2) shore,
Tatter-clad, bare-headed beggar throng
This compassionless highway
Of innumerable terminally ill this prison
This dust – darkness pervaded smoke-womb
All drown in the blue – within an eyelid rapt in dream-expanse.
In conch-white cloud-masses, in a bright sky in constellation’s night
Earth’s worm-like withered moult breaks
At your lightning-touch, O sleepless distant wish-world!

1. fair
2. fevered

Night of a dense wind last night – night of a countless constellations:
All night the wide wind has played in my mosquito-net.
Mosquito-net has swelled sometimes like the belly of the monsoonic sea.
Sometimes tearing from the bed
Has wanted to fly in the direction of the constellations.
Sometimes it seemed to me – perhaps in half-sleep – above my head there is no mosquito-net.
Cleaving to the lap of Arcturus in the ocean of the blue wind like a white swan it is flying.
Was such a wonderful night last night.

All the dead constellations had awoken last night – not a gap of one grain was there in the sky
Faces of all the faded dead loved ones of the earth I have seen in those constellations:
Like on the crest of the uswattha tree in the dark night dew-wetted eyes of the male eagle lover were glittering all the constellations.
Like on the shoulder of the Queen of Babylon on a moon-drenched night luminous skin of the cheetah was shining the vast sky.
Was such a strange night last night.

Those constellations that on the sky’s breast a thousand thousand years earlier had died,
They too have through the window a countless dead skies brought with them.
Those beauties whom I have in Assyria, Egypt, Bidisha seen dying
Last night they very far away in the limit of the sky in mist and mist tall spears in their hands holding have stood themselves in rows as if –
To oppress Death?
Deep victory of Life to express?
Fearsome profound column of Love to erect?

Immobile, overwhelmed I have become.
The mighty blue torment of last night has torn me apart as if.
Within the boundless outspread wings of the sky
Earth like an insect has been wiped out last night
And mad wind has from the breast of the sky descended
Into my window in tonnes
Like at the cry of the lion a countless zebras in the green upthrow of the field.

My breast has been filled full with scent of the green grass of the spread-out-wide veldt.
With pungency of the ten-directions-flooding protean sun.
Like roar of mad-for-mating tigress with the agitated vast living hairy joy of the Dark.
With the terrible blue madness of living.

My soul tearing from the earth flew off
In ocean of the blue wind like a mad bloated balloon went flying,
The mast of a distant constellation to star and star took flying,
Like a furious vulture.

Unscrewing the hydrant the leper licks up water
Or that hydrant perhaps, was choked.
Now midnight descends in a rush upon the city
One motorcar, coughing like a donkey passes

Shaking off restless petrol. Though ever vigilant,
As though someone has horribly fallen into water.
Three rickshaws running merge into the last gaslamp
In a pull as of wizard magic.

I too, fleeing Phear Lane – in haste
Walking many miles – beside the wall
Have stood myself in Bentinck Street – in Teritibazar,
In a breeze dry as groundnuts.

Glare of the drunken light kisses my cheek
Pong of kerosene, wood, lac, hessian, leather
Merging with drone of the dynamo
Keeps taut the bow-string.

Taut keeps the dead and living world
Taut keeps the string of life’s bow.
When, in distant times, Maitreyi has uttered spells,
Has conquered kingdoms immortal Atilla.

Ever in personal tune still from the window above
Half-awake the Jewish maiden sings.
Laughing, the realm of the forefathers thinks – what is song,
And what mines of gold, oil, paper ?

Some Phiringi young men smartly pass
Leaning against a column a lax Negro smiles
The briar pipe in his hand cleans
With confidence of an old gorilla.

Vast night of the city seems to him
The forest of Libya.
Still the animals are regulated – very proper –
In fact out of shyness they clothe themselves.