Autotomy

Afterworld by Neha 

In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two.
It abandons one self to a hungry world
and with the other self it flees.

It violently divides into doom and salvation,
retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.

An abyss appears in the middle of its body
between what instantly become two foreign shores.

Life on one shore, death on the other.
Here hope and there despair.

If there are scales, the pans don’t move.
If there is justice, this is it.

To die just as required, without excess.
To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left.

We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.

The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
quiet, quickly dying out.

Here the heavy heart, there non omnis moriar—
just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers.

The abyss doesn’t divide us.
The abyss surrounds us.

In memoriam Halina Poświatowska

- Wislawa Szymborska

Kufr

Badal-ta Ras-ta by Neha 

aaj assa ek duniya vechi
aaj assa ek duniya vechi
te ek deen ve aaj le aaye
gaal kufr di kitti

today we sold one world
today we sold one world
then, returned with a new faith today 
we did a blasphemous thing

supney da ek thaan udhaya
supney da ek thaan udhaya
gaj ku kapda paad le aate
umar di choli sitti
aaj assa ek duniya vechi
gaal kufr di kitti

we picked a fabric of dreams 
we picked a fabric of dreams 
tore one yard of cloth,
sewed a blouse of the ages 
today we sold one world
we did a blasphemous thing

aaj assa ambar de kaliyon
baddal di ek chhapni layi
aaj assa ambar de kaliyon
baddal di ek chhapni layi
kut chandni pitti
aaj assi ek duniya vechi
te ek deen ve aaj li aaye
gaal kufr di kitti

today, from the sky’s pitcher
we lifted the cloud cover,
today, from the sky’s pitcher
we lifted the cloud cover,
and took one gulp of moonlight
today we sold one world
we did a blasphemous thing

geeta naal chuka javange
geeta naal chuka javange
ye jo assa maut deko nu
kadi udhari litti
aaj assi ek duniya vechi
te ek deen ve aaj li aaye
gaal kufr di kitti

we will pay the price in songs
we will pay the price in songs
for this, from death - you see, 
we have taken moments on a loan 
today we sold one world
we did a blasphemous thing

main shaah te shayad tu vi
main shaah te shayad tu vi
shayad ek shaah de vich dikhlota
shayad ek nazar de nere te baitha
shayad ahsaas de ek mod pe tola
aur wo pra aitihasik samay aadi gale
main shaah te shayad tu vi

ae meri te teri ho nashi
jo duniya di aad passa bani
main di pehchan de akhar manne
tu bhi pehchan de akhar manne
te o na o aad passa di aad pustak
likhi mai shah te shayad tu vi

ae mera te tera mel si
assi pathran di sej te sute
te akhaan hooth olam pokhate
mere te tere badan de akhar manne
te unnao naal pustak anuvad kitti
rig veda di rachna te bahoot pichhu di galle
main shah te shayad tu vi

that was our tryst, yours and mine
we slept on a bed of stones
and our eyes, lips and fingertips,
became the letters of your body and mine
they then made the translation of this first book
the rig veda was compiled much later.

shayad ek shaah de rith dikhlota
shayad ek nazar te nere te baitha
shayad ahsaas de ek mod te thurla
pur pra aitihasik samay saadi ghale

- Amrita Pritam 

Famous

A very famous umbrella by Neha 

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,  
which knew it would inherit the earth  
before anybody said so.  

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds  
watching him from the birdhouse.  

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.  

The idea you carry close to your bosom  
is famous to your bosom.  

The boot is famous to the earth,  
more famous than the dress shoe,  
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it  
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.  

I want to be famous to shuffling men  
who smile while crossing streets,  
sticky children in grocery lines,  
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,  
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,  
but because it never forgot what it could do.

-  Naomi Shihab Nye 

The little ways that encourage good fortune

Watch your step by Neha 

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others:
they act only from the self--
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.

- William Stafford

Love After Love

The Lovejoy Columns by Neha

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott

ABC

Unknowable Pedestrian Birds by Neha 

I’ll never find out now
What A. thought of me.
If B. ever forgave me in the end.
Why C. pretended everything was fine.
What part D. played in E’s silence.
What F. had been expecting, if anything.
Why G. forgot when she knew perfectly well.
What H. had to hide.
What I. wanted to add.
If my being around
meant anything
to J. and K. and the rest of the alphabet.

- Wislawa Szymborska

Charāġhoñ ko

Dhoop by Neha 

Charāġhoñ ko āñkhoñ meñ mahfūz rakhnā 

baḌī duur tak raat hī raat hogī  

Musāfir haiñ ham bhī musāfir ho tum bhī 

kisī moḌ par phir mulāqāt hogī 

- Bashir Badr 

Ode to Dirt

Spring Canvas by Neha

Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,
I thought that you were only the background
for the leading characters—the plants
and animals and human animals.
It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space
in which to shine. Subtle, various,
sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain,
you’re our democracy. When I understood
I had never honored you as a living
equal, I was ashamed of myself,
as if I had not recognized
a character who looked so different from me,
but now I can see us all, made of the
same basic materials—
cousins of that first exploding from nothing—
in our intricate equation together. O dirt,
help us find ways to serve your life,
you who have brought us forth, and fed us,
and who at the end will take us in
and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

—Sharon Olds

Lightly, Lightly, Ever so Lightly

Lis by Neha 

Lightly, lightly, ever so lightly
A wind passes so lightly
And dies away, ever so lightly
And I know not what I think
Nor do I try to know

- Albero Careiro ( Fernando Pessoa), Translators - E. Honig, S.M.Brown, Translations. Spring, `999

Threshold

Passage by Neha

[We know that we must at last forsake the world, and we are accustomed in moments of weariness or exaltation to consider a voluntary forsaking; but how can we, who have read so much poetry, seen so many paintings, listened to so much music, where the cry of the flesh and the cry of the soul seems one, forsake it harshly and rudely? - W.B. Yeats, September 1912, Introduction to Gitanjali]

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali