उन दरख्तों के परे

उन दरख्तों पर आवाज़ के सिवा कुछ 

भी नहीं, आवाज़ भी एक सीमा है जो बाँध 

लेती है इंसानों को, कविता उससे कभी जूझती

कभी झुंझलाती, कभी नाराज़ होकर उस पार धकेल 

देती जिस पार कहीं कोई शाम का सन्नाटा या भोर 

का शांत छुपा होता, जहाँ कहीं उनका वो अस्तित्व 

होता जहाँ वो कभी नहीं होते , उन मानवी प्रतिबिम्बों 

का जो बिखरे आईने से हमे देख तो जाते बेचैन 

नहीं करते 

तुम चलना किसी शाम, दिन को टोकरी में बाँध कर 

एक कोने में छोड़ आना, खिडकियों पर से उदासी को 

समेट बंद कर देना किताबों में, रौशन दानों में सुबह को 

भटकने देना, आ जाना खाली हाथ, उन दरख्तों पर जहाँ 

आवाजों के सिवा कुछ भी नहीं 

शहर जब थक कर सो जाता है, ये सारे आवाज़ कई मील 

पैदल चल कर यहाँ आते हैं पहचानने एक दुसरे को, कहीं 

कोई खोया हुआ उसमे चेहरा ढूँढ़ते हैं, कहीं खोई हुई खामोशी 

तलाशते हैं, आ जाना तुम आवाजों के उस पार जहाँ केवल 

आवजों का खेल रोज़ होता है 

हम बैठेंगे हाथों की छुअन से दूर, बस महसूस करते उसे 

अपनी यादों में, कुछ बोल के परे उन आवाजों में अपने 

यादों में नहीं तलाशते, कविता को इस शान्ति में अपने चारों 

ओर एक दायरा बनाते देखते, फिर उस नदी में कविता को 

बहा देंगे

Fragments of a broken day

We live on the wishes of the morrow, collecting fragments like sands, every picture incomplete, broken from our own hands, and yet the pieces when they merge crumble in the sands of time, the nature beyond mimics our desire and stills time for a pause in our breath, like pictures captured in still camera waiting to tell a story, we merge the sand, making way for a river to flow....while it is just fragments telling half a story which is human....

Perhaps a story to be written has to go back in time, or rummage through the shriveled hairs of history, where among the freckled locks some dreams have disappeared...perhaps its time to begin from the river and turn its course, untangle the life which hung between memory and dream, between pain and ecstasy, perhaps the unraveling has already happened somewhere and we are all in search of the place, the future from where we want to return, to the place of our own .....

Daily like a prodigal child I dig up holes in memory, removing all the soil around the dreams and those of everyday happenings, hide them there to be surprised in the dusk of life, but maybe the dawn never came and the dusk already started receding in time, i fail to grope it, what if it never comes and I never uncover the lost secrets which I promised to me? I covered them in unwritten letters, in words among the trees, in silence among the wind, in flight among the birds, now I just stare at them like a lost vagabond, the baggage of recovering the lost is more and the future dies in the past, and yet they never come.....

 

Have you seen them somewhere staring out of a cracked mirror, have you seen them hanging out of the blinds of the window sills, have you seen them on broken discs of songs, have you seen them in reels of movies which don't play, have you seen them on the dog who lost a year, the man with the one arm, the widow standing alone on the dark alley with a bowl in hand which never fills up, have you seen it in the drunkard who crosses my street every night, have you seen them in the mother who lost her child and yet looks for her, in the torn pages of the book, or the lost ink of pages, or discolored currency notes, or in poets who lost the only poem which would have brought them to the world, or the girl who lost her love, or the beds which were never made for themselves, the plants which dry before they live, the coffee which smells before it is made....give me some fragments, i am lost in all of them and they in me and both in me, reconcile me to them, if you can do so, will you do this last for me? will those gods come down off their cross to give me just a moment in this being?

In the shadow of words

I am locked in the prison of words
like a shadow locked to its body, come
the night, the shadow separates its borrowed
tongue, the mirror refuses the body, and the
word cracks open its wound; beyond the cracks
lies a poem I may never reach.