Veil

All around me a sea of noise

I, a lost fog, unable to veil 

the sound, tear away the last dew 

draining from ur eyes in 

hope

A dark will descend as I 

envelop you as the last veil and 

the deep pores of a sorrow long forgotten 

keep tugging at the noise of the people I

will never know 

Some seem familiar for they are the stories 

I have told myself, some I will tell myself 

in the last attempt to bracket this world 

Forgotten loves

Was it a drunken night of a full moon?

you sat next to me complaining,

of inconsolable simple and complicated loves. 

Coming close in a grief born in negation

in moments of life when everything was dying 

in emptiness, memory waged its lonesome battle

against love and two lovers against time. 

Half a pause

The sunshine and a smile

lost on half a track in the

rattling of the rails, a few

escape to the flower in your hair

opening up a deceased song, a

few stink like half dead 

carcasses from which poems 

of love refuse to be born. 

A few are lost in the sea 

and in its hands carrying the 

heaviness of millions of memories

only to drown itself in the 

forgetting where the rotting 

forgiveness will be washed on the shore. 

And you who walk

cautiously, yet tragically on this 

shore of time, a time knowing no 

history of immortality, what do you 

collect in your hands, why do you 

make this bag heavy for yourself? 

Did you yet find half the song

buried in those shells when your 

breath touches it? Did not you 

find a wail, a half cry, or a trembling dream 

there? Why yet you 'being' keeps walking? why yet 

you rails keep moving? would you know till the last, 

what moves when the tracks don't? 

what sings when you don't? 

who cries when you don't? 

And you the 'being', the born and 

'half a life' yet know not.

have a pause, a silence 

wait a moment, slow this time 

and this run, for

you and me

A dying word

A word dying in my hands
stuck to my pen to reveal
its last breath by not writing
but opened up inside me
bit by bit, inch by inch
like a slow pain and the
scorpion crawling inside
crafted a web trapping lost
forgiven memories, devouring
a love I never had

ज़ख्‍़मी शब्‍द

मैंने एक ज़ख्‍़मी शब्‍द चुना और उसके इर्द-गिर्द रचा अर्थों और
किरादारों का एक घरोंदा
भर दिया फिर उसे आधे जले गीतों 

और बिखरे टूटे रंगों में
वक्‍त बीत चला यादों के कारवाँ के साथ
और साथ ले चला अपने उसका नाम
हाँ शायद वह मेरा बिना ही खुश है
मेरा आँसु , मेरा प्‍यार

• 
  
  This translation was an outcome of a dialogue, as most  translations are. This was possible with a dialogue with my friend Pramod who zealously reads my work and creates a new work in translation itself. 

A wounded word

I picked a wounded word
built a home of meanings and
characters around it
stuffed it into half smoky muses
and weathered storms
of broken colours

Years passed, memory played its game
and remembrance took away its name.
perhaps its happy without me,
my tears, my love. 

Words

Slowly verses will die down 

as mist trickles through the ashes 

we will not remember that day where 

dream was covered by a passing snow flake 

and the last tourist forgot her destination 

A melancholy settles down in my song 

as the rattle of rail tracks awakens me 

in the dead of the night and the last flickering 

lightening threatens to reveal my shadow and 

the lonely wandering cat gives me a lone stare 

knowing not my purpose 

I am slowly forgetting you as my 

fainting memory struggles to rekindle 

a dream last shared, as my words refuse 

to reveal the last muse etched for love