Bibhu Padhi
NIGHT LIVES
What is seen are shadows
that approximately determine
the lines of my sleep.
Nothing may be given over
to the night and stars.
The image of the goddess
wanders in the open fields,
the empty road lying
in front of my
borrowed house.
Even in sleep, shadows
and dreams have to be
seen as my light and darkness.
Nothing else seems to be
where I hid bits
of paper from letters
received long ago
from friends and lovers.
The earth sits still
on its own ground
even as the night and stars
look for their place
in the sky’s furrowed space.
Fulfilment lingers at the edge
of the muted dark.
**
NEW PLACE
Just beyond the edge
of the hills, mustard fields
remind me of the yellow
bed-sheets. Here too
sadness descends
like sub-lunar light.
I tell my story
to the walls and ceilings.
Everything comes
in a rush from
a region of memories
and floods me like
September. The mind
is night and darkness;
sleep is a child that
doesn’t know where it is,
at a place as remotely
placed as dreams.
**
FEVER
This is like reminiscing about a fever
one has just gone through, with
the temperature constantly touching
the uppermost end of the thermometer.
You could not think of anything
except yourself—your body, your
mind, the depletion of thoughts,
the much painful loss of words.
Even your memory does not
belong to you, having traveled
to a land you never visited nor
heard of, but somehow know.
The fever had laid you in the bed,
without movement, without food,
without much of a shelter. Is shelter
only a house with rooms? You feel
sure it could not be so. It is more
considerate, taking care of your mind
and heart, your small body, without
the unscrupulous silence of a fever.
**
TRANSPARENT WATER
for Kim Dorman
The body is far from water.
However, the waiting for
a clean bath stays
through days of inactivity
and a dumb gaze
at nothing worth a name.
The subterranean mind
looks for every little thing
now converging into
something like sleep.
I long for a time when
everything came in a rush,
defying the mind’s usual
interferences, absorbed
by the heart. I recall
a line’s spontaneous call,
almost visible, like water, its
fluent movement through space.
Now the body is far
from clear water, its visibility
awaiting the mind’s
commands, its movement
solidifying into my
unresponsive cells.
**
SICKNESS: MORNING
A dry mouth troubles this
body, the mind is stuck
to the taste of sand.
The salt-taste is long gone
into some other mouth,
its residence far from mine.
Drops of Hanneman and Nash
are believed to be an assurance
against further loss, any savage rite.
But the body, now getting slowly
introduced to a tired unevenness,
looks for consolation elsewhere.
Limbs go cold, like winter,
curled around themselves
to restore warmth and peace.
I go slow with things, like a leaf, pray
for a return to the basics, even as
the mind is a prisoner of disbelief.
**
THE BLISSFUL CENTRE
The trees grow rapidly,
telling us about a world
that is full of life,
an ancient pain.
We sit in the shadow,
thinking of the future.
Things move before us
like old ghosts.
I smell an absence
that is difficult to ignore.
Who else is waiting
the way we do?
I am sure, the world is waiting
for something else too.
The shining future,
with its promise
of beautiful trees,
their blissful centre
out of which grow
the seeds, the carriers
of our days to come—
ecstatic like the leaves,
cool like shadows and time.
We continue to sit in the shadows
forgetting the hours, other spaces,
enjoying their open centres.
**
THIS TIRED FLESH
Give me something to
depend on, something
to take care of my tired flesh.
I am so incomplete;
I cannot carry this body
to the threshold of happiness.
How much I need to belong
to the charmed circle,
the incomprehensible life!
I know everything ends in me,
goes out of me to the vast world,
the intriguing and the immeasurable.
I am the fire which consumes me,
takes care of this body
in the absence of your love.
I have this belief– one day
I shall be taken back
to heaven.
Happiness is something
ever renewing itself in the regions
of death and rebirth.
I cannot detach myself
from fear and anxiety, sleepless
nights, the boredom of the days.
Now night is deepening into
a deeper darkness, rustling over
the roads and lanes of the city.
How far is heaven from here?
and there is the quick answer
from a knowing voice:
“Heaven is where you are
and there are no migrations,
only a looking back and finding
all those things you loved,
all the faces that raised you up,
all the faith that helped you grow up.”
But the tired flesh still looks for
fresh assurance about life,
how good it is, or can be.
**
ANCESTRAL ROLES
This vibration is beyond
the psychic, is almost
perennial, quiet.
We must work toward
its perfection, apply
ourselves to our commitments.
Some things move out,
having failed to act out
their ancestral roles.
Then they spend their time
doing nothing except
recalling the past day’s work.
They get up from sleep
have their lemon tea and relax.
The day begins its round
across an incalculable space,
an indefinite time. There is
yet another cup of tea
and a waiting for another
piece of sleep. Now sleep
seems rare, belonging
to an irretrievable past.
The day is approaching
its highest point, its moving away
from all that was true
in the morning, all
that was new and fulfilling.
The vibration is back again,
quietly, disturbing no one,
like a leaf on a tree
that hardly knows what it is for.
We look at the tree, inspired by
its greatness, humbled by its
mere presence. The leaves dance
in green abundance, as if they were free,
hardly taking note of their own end.
**
BODY BEAUTIFUL
The vivid body of life
is encountered everywhere,
remembered for its simplicity.
The earth claims that the body
belongs to it, will in fact return
to it in the midst of the music
of departure, a song that prompts
every one of us to participate
in the body’s slowing moments.
The space that used to contain
the body is now one less
than it was before.
Time is counted while
the body lasts through its
grand design, its pride.
There is no other way
the body could be viewed
except through its exceptional
time, its elementary principles
of growth and extinction.
However there might be someone
who flouts all rules, makes itself
more vivid through the laws
of expansion and new life.
Its vividness is what life
is all about, is based on.
Is there someone yet who can
share this vividness, slow
its growth, suspend its
basic laws, carry itself
through the distant space
where everything is praised
in terms of infinity?
*******
Bibhu Padhi, a two times Pushcart nominee, has published seventeen books of poetry. His poems have appeared in magazines throughout the English-speaking world, such as Contemporary Review, London Magazine, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, American Scholar, Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine, Southwest Review, TriQuarterly, Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, and Indian Literature. They have been included in numerous anthologies and textbooks. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, India.
Leave a Reply