The Green God of Grasshoppers

The Mad

.

The mad have no caste

nor religion. They transcend

gender, live outside

ideologies. We do not deserve

their innocence.

.

Their language is not of dreams

but of another reality. Their love

is moonlight. It overflows

on the full moon day.

.

Looking up they see

gods we have never heard of. They are

shaking their wings when

we fancy they are

shrugging their shoulders. They hold

even flies have souls

and the green god of grasshoppers

leaps up on thin legs.

.

At times they see trees bleed, hear

lions roaring from the streets. At times

they watch Heaven gleaming

in a kitten’s eyes, just as

we do. But they alone can hear

ants sing in a chorus.

.

While patting the air

they are taming a cyclone

over the Mediterranean. With

their heavy tread, they stop

a volcano from erupting.

.

They have another measure

of time. Our century is

their second. Twenty seconds,

and they reach Christ; six more,

they are with the Buddha.

.

In a single day, they reach

the big bang at the beginning.

.

They go on walking restless for,

their earth is boiling still.

.

The mad are not

mad like us.

.

.

..

To See, To Look

.

We do not fail to see anything

but we fail to look.

We hear, but do not listen.

.

The map of an unborn country

painted by a young man’s blood

on the crowded road,

the cry of a woman, as if from a coffin,

drowned in the mob’s tumult,

a piece of adolescent flesh salted with tears

from a boy from Arunachal

in the platter of meat

served in the hotel,

the odour of a mother burning

among the scents from the flowershop,

the manacles of the innocent man,

his eyes closed, seated next to the policeman.

.

Only when a gentleman with dark glasses

burns our thighs with his cigarette

we stare at him.

.

.

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No Time

.

There is no more time, but

there are some evil deeds

yet to accomplish.

To divide lovers,

to spread hate and harvest death,

to lead a revolution

that denies happiness

to everyone, equally.

.

All this calls for hard work.

I have the time for it,

and the impatience too.

.

.

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Poverty

.

To see how beautiful poverty is

you need to see the Garo woman

walking along the city street.

.

The crown of feathers tucked among her hair,

the tattoos that turn her body into a parrot,

the many-coloured bangles that adorn her

from her wrists to the shoulders

like the annual rings of a wild teak ,

the stone necklaces dangling

from her neck up to her waist

reminding you of Goddess Lakshmi

in the calendar-picture.

But in the belly concealed by the loin cloth

in black and red competing for glamour,

only an unquenched fire.

.

.

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How to Go to the Tao Temple

(From the sequence, Northern Cantos)

.

Don’t lock the door.

Go lightly like the leaf in the breeze

along the dawn’s valley.

If you are too fair,

cover yourself with ash.

If too clever, go half-asleep.

That which is fast

will tire fast:

be slow, slow as stillness.

.

Be formless like water.

Lie low, don’t even try to go up.

Don’t go round the deity:

nothingness has no directions,

no front nor back.

Don’t call it by name,

its name has no name.

No offerings: empty pots

are easier to carry than full ones.

No prayers too: desires

have no place here.

.

Speak silently, if speak you must:

like the rock speaking to the trees

and leaves to flowers.

Silence is the sweetest of voices

and Nothingness has

the fairest of colours.

.

Let none see you coming

.

and none, going.

Cross the threshold shrunken

like one crossing a river in winter.

You have only a moment here

like the melting snow.

.

No pride: you are not even formed.

No anger: not even dust

is at your command.

No sorrow: it doesn’t alter anything.

Renounce greatness:

there is no other way to be great.

Don’t ever use your hands:

They are contemplating

not love, but violence.

.

Let the fish lie in its water

and the fruit, on its bough.

The soft one shall survive the hard,

like the tongue that survives teeth.

Only the one who does nothing

can do everything.

.

Go, the unmade idol

awaits you.

.

(Tao Temple, Chu- Fu )

.

.

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One Grief

.

One grief smells my feet

like a puppy, finds I am not his man

and rushes to my neighbour, wagging his tail.

.

A bark. A cry.

.

A joy caresses my cheeks

like a kitten: until another grief

comes crawling by

and winds around to choke me.

.

.

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Stammer

.

Stammer is no handicap.

It is a mode of speech.

.

Stammer is the silence that falls

between the word and its meaning,

just as lameness is the

silence that falls between

the word and the deed.

.

Did stammer precede language

or succeed it?

Is it only a dialect or

a language itself?

These questions make

the linguists stammer.

.

Each time we stammer

we are offering a sacrifice

to the God of meanings.

.

When a whole people stammer

stammer becomes their mother-tongue:

just as it is with us now.

.

God too must have stammered

when He created man.

That is why all the words of man

carry different meanings.

That is why everything he utters

from his prayers to his commands

stammers,

like poetry.

.

.

.

Knife

.

The knife is stuck deep

in the soil, on the green tree,

on a woman’s chest

The one who made it does not see it

His job is done once it has been made.

.

.

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Learning Languages

.

I would love to learn languages,

Santali, Balochi, Catalan, Slovenian.

In all these tongues

we can say ‘love’;

we can say ‘kill’ too .

.

It is too late;

no time even to design a time-piece

may be, I can design a verse-piece

.

Languages walk past the age of love

bent over a walker.

.

I too will go,

to the land where I have plenty of time

to learn languages

and then

I will kill you with love.