Today my heart is broken

Don’t judge me by my actions today
for my good manners have deserted me,
while I weep endlessly
Don’t pay attention to how I talk
Don’t ask me to explain my sorrow
Forgive me if I don’t respond to your greetings
Don’t ask me to follow your rules
stand by me while I cry inconsolably
as I know not how else to express my hurt

 

Searching for your shadows

I went searching for your shadows
in the air that you breathed,
on the roads that you walked,
and on the hills that you strolled.

I went there searching
for the shards of your broken promise
knowing you would have been there.
I went there in search of your shadows
for, your last word to me was a black dot

your scent in the air
told me you were here
those fading footprints on the road were telling the story of your fabled arrival

Coming for you

I am coming for you,
leaving aside everything I hold dear in this life
and the ones to come after
I don’t know if I would ever catch you
I will be here waiting for you
till the end of time
until the last star is put out
and the last atom disintegrates unto itself
until the universe collapses

pursuit of suffering

I know you by the way you walk,
and your too familiar talk.
I know your movements, and your shadows
I know you for every moment of your existence.
I know you are here to break my heart one more time
I know I am like the moth that runs into the flame with all its passion, just to get burnt.
I know the first time you did this to me, just like I know every other time
Yet, I couldn’t resist coming for you seeking one more moment with you
one more moment of bliss, one more experience, one more suffering
Is it the suffering that I am addicted to, I wonder.
every time it ends the same way –
I am stripped of all that I am, until I dissolve completely into you,
until I exist no more
then I wake up into all this misery that is not mine in a place that doesn’t belong to me,
doing things that I don’t want to.
why did you beckon me with all your intoxicating charm if it isn’t to leave me in this suffering?
Yes, I know you were going to leave me broken-hearted
the moment I heard your call
Why did I come after you, If I knew I would be left in pain,
All my hankering, and pleading in vain?
I knew; I knew you would do this to me
And I know you would do it to me again,
and I wouldn’t resist it the next time either
I am here to suffer in your pursuit after all

I have neither providence nor time on my side.

I have neither providence, nor time on my side.
nor do I have the sprite of youth
All I have is unwavering faith, and indomitable spirit

Life always moves one step ahead of me

No matter how fast I move,
life is always one step ahead of me.
no matter how much I learn
it always finds something new to teach me.
no matter how much I grow
It puts me in situations that I come short of.
no matter how strong I become,
it delivers a stronger blow each time,
that knocks me down off my feet,
and leaves me gasping for breath.
no matter how tall I reach
I always come short of one inch
from the high goals that I want to catch.

tell me father

I know not, what to ask for
I know not, what to fight for
I don’t know what all this is for
tell me father, in words that I can make sense of
for, my feeble intellect is of no use to know you.
how can I tear away this veil
that separates me from you?
Why did you put me in the middle of all this false glitter
when you know this is not what your child needs

This apparent joy that I know is a mirage
this suffering that is without any meaning
this suffocating helplessness that comes out of their dualistic dance,
what are they for, father?

tell me father, in a language that I can understand
for, my feeble intellect is of no use to know you
how can I learn you, and your creation?
Why do I fail to see you in everything that is your manifestation?

‘TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY’ by Hafiz

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

 

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

 

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

 

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

 

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

 

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

 

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

 

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

 

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

 Unless you had been ‘held upside down, and shaken violently till all the nonsense in you comes out’, you can’t even begin to comprehend what Hafiz is talking about. It is all madness; a madness that seems like, well, madness :), and perhaps nonsense, and stupidity. You can’t empathize with it unless you had been in that madness at least once, had a glimpse of it, and can vaguely remember, and hardly recognize it when you see it again. Khalil Gibran said “Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” Those are wise words, I have to say. And when love does find you worthy, and is directing your course, you are too busy fighting it, ignoring it, and hightailing it out of there. It takes courage to accept the madness, and dive deeply into it. Unless you are brave enough to make a complete fool of yourself, and accept that you are no longer the master of yourself, you can’t embrace it.

‘If’, by Rudyard Kipling

Seems like Google has figured me so well that it started dishing out poetry in the first page for pretty much everything that I search for. See what I found when I was looking for the ‘if’ clause:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

So deeply insightful, and beautifully written. Incidentally, this poem is read out on multiple instances in the Telugu movie ‘Happy Days’. It feels good to know that there are such directors in Telugu film industry who not only know of such high poetry, but could find occasion to quote it in their movies.

This meaningless search for a meaning

Hafiz wonderfully summarizes, in his poem, my wanderings hither and thither. Examining God under a microscope, dissecting her with sharp scalpels, and searching in the vast sky with a huge telescope, it seems, are all futile activities:

A wine bottle fell from a wagon and
broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

and did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
and began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the “night candle” rose into the sky
and one drunk creäture, laying down his instrument,
said to his friend  for no apparent
Reason,

“What should we do about that moon?”

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift — versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)