During childhood
In sleep
I had seen
A white horse neighing thunderously
Racing through woodlands

Today
In the demented monsoon squall
The back wall of the house
Crashed down
From that bleached backdrop
Sprinted away
The white horse of the dream
All over the city
A stampede of a thousand
Wildly neighing
Horses
Vanished in the entrails of the earth
Green grass
Reincarnating
Over the collapsed houses
Behind the emerging grass shoots
Quiver of gazelle tail
Next day
Masons had arrived
And
The back wall was re-erected

Translated from Gujarati by Dileep Jhaveri
 

Poems

1

Sound can't be dug
and silence can't be lifted
O rebellious friends !
We can't bury
our rambling skulls
nor can we stitch together
our grey worries.
So
to let our swan-like
white dreams float.
How long would we beg
of this thorny fence of barren land ?
True,
the trees have started flying,
taking advantage of our dim eyes.
But is it also not true that
we have been cheated through this gift of eyes ?
O my tired friends, who
after drinking a handful of water
from the eye-lake of the Goddess of speech
have got down to work again !
Indeed,
sound can't be dug
and silence can't be lifted.

2

To dispose of the corpse of God
drifting in the drop of my
death
I am writing poems for twentytwo years

Translated by Varsha Das