Talk to me
Show to me my face for it has
Been burned by the warmth of your eyes
Talk to me
Remove the curtain on my view
On which there is a rainbow of pretense
Stretched out
The rainbow which is not a mirror of aspiring
And neither a step stone of the ink of passion!
You saw that yesterday, I (A beggar)
Under the shadow of the wall of morning
Was found shivering
Your eyes, your lips kept staring
How could I have believed in their warmth for I
was in the depth of the catastrophes of my heart,
Swayed by memories
Talk to me
For between the night turning in to the dawn
There is no distance
Talk to me for your discourse
Is a verdict against the face of death*
Now transcend beyond the eyes and ears and lips
On the paths of desolate cities
Dip the chandeliers of voice
The waves of secrets
Will emerge, streak after streak!
*Improvement needed. Suggestions are welcomed.
To sit somewhere beautiful and still not find
words for saying something that is not so beautiful is kind of sad. The
Freudian psychiatrists who promoted the therapy culture of
lie-down-on-the-couch-and-talk have led us to believe that we find it easier to
voice uncomfortable and anxiety-causing thoughts in a surrounding that is
non-judgmental, accepting and peaceful. This place is way more than that in a
lot of ways. But then again, life is not the way we are led to believe it is.
I'll describe the place anyway, in a hope that I start describing myself in the
process.
There is a tree on the far right side of my sitting
position with whom I feel a certain kinship. It has multiple parasitic plants
wrapped over its entire length and on its leaves at the top. These plants look
extremely attractive on that tree, as if a bride wearing a jewelry. But that
'beauty' costs that plant a lot. According to Botanists, those parasitic plants
suck the life out of that tree without contributing anything towards its growth
other than that splendor which most people don't normally see. There are three
conclusions that can be made from this sight.
1, Sometimes what makes you beautiful and
unique, hurts you the most.
2. The irony about that beauty is that you
can't see it on our own. Our only source for watching that beauty in a
reflection are the eyes of the people around you. Eyes that know how to see and
are awake.
3. Often times, receiving the 'privilege' of
that beauty is not a choice. Embracing it, is. But it involves a lot of
awakened eyes around. Or at least some.
I love that tree because it embraces that
burden so beautifully. It's now being reflected in the water gathered in the
open air theatre after the rain. I am sitting somewhere in the middle of those
stairs. The tree that I just described stands in the context of a sky filled
with moving clouds and a fading light. Watching a sunset here would have been a
luxury but it happens to occur every day on my extreme right side between which
stands a Gothic building. That building is often more beautiful than that sunset.
Sitting on
those cold, welcomingly coarse stairs, I am happy and satisfied. Sort of.
Few moments back,
I saw numerous birds wandering in the sky and around me in the now drying amphitheater.
The movement of three birds caught my eye in particular.
There was a bird
carrying a very small, broken branch in its beak, flying towards a place
presumably its home. Or a place where its home will be. And that branch will be
an addition to the security and authenticity of that home, or it may become its
founding stone. That struck me as something meaningful. If we suppose that
there is a place and a union that human beings create which is called a home and family,
and it is different from a house and a group, that is how it is made. They
gather the broken pieces displaced by the storms and upheavals, brought to them
or found by them through accident or design and then integrate it in their own
lives. Permanently or temporarily. A law of physics that I read somewhere says
that energy can’t be created or destroyed. It only changes from one form to
another form. In the same way, may be, homes and families are created by the
destruction, change of form and by the gathering of that change of form and its
integration such as that bird had gathered that thin branch that once might
have been a part of a glorious tree. It would have had different functions back
then. It was adorned by leaves and sunlight used to visit it every morning. But
presumably displaced by a storm, it found itself utterly alone, broken and
useless, waiting to be decomposed. The bird however saw that out of home branch
and would have thought about the way it can strengthen and be a part of its own
home.
Homes thus, a
place of comfort, certainty and nurture, are formed by utter displacement,
uncertainty and wreckage.
The other bird
that I observed was flying at a great speed towards me. Suddenly it saw me
(Presumably. Apparently, I am not visible from a distance) and turned back in midair,
without even changing its position, at the same speed. That was remarkable. I
had never seen a bird do that. Other than the deeper understanding of how repellant I am, even to the birds, I can’t decipher any other meaning
from that.
Then there was
this bird I saw whose wings were shining in the sunlight. That bird was flying
effortlessly, barely moving those beautiful shining wings.
This sight left
me with a simple question. Can life be so effortless? And the answer was, when
you are flying so high, may it is.
