dancing with my silent lover
music seems so loud.
my lover do you like my dance,
the way i sway my hips for you?
my lover i love your grace,
your song, caressing words,
imagining your voice and responding to the void
my lover, will i ever get to love you
feel you, your voice and your tender hand?
oh my lover, let me love you
......
Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out.
Summers in your absence are as dark as a room.
I have closed my arms again. They must do without.
To knock at my heart is like knocking at a tomb.
Do not write!
Do not write. Let us learn to die, as best we may.
Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know?
To hear that you love me, when you are far away,
Is like hearing from heaven and never to go.
......
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.
The sound of your voice
......
I will not drink henceforth this cup
This fruit of vine I will not sup
Until that day I drink it new
In my Father's house with you
Said my Lord in tender tones
This will comfort all your moans
For when ye eat this bread and wine
Remember I'll come to make you mine
......
ALAS for me for that my love is dead !
Buried deep down, and may not rise again ;
Self- murdered, vanished, gone beyond recall,
And this is all my pain.
'Tis not that she I loved is gone from me,
She lives and grows more lovely day by day ;
Not Death could kill my love, but though she lives,
My love has died away.
......
dancing with my silent lover
music seems so loud.
my lover do you like my dance,
the way i sway my hips for you?
my lover i love your grace,
your song, caressing words,
imagining your voice and responding to the void
my lover, will i ever get to love you
feel you, your voice and your tender hand?
oh my lover, let me love you
......
she held me
in her arms
like night holds
the moon and stars
Posh literally means a follower. I have translated this poem into English as a tribute to Habba khatoon.
Original : POSHI DASWANI (By Habba khatoon)
Translation
I am the earth and you are the sky,
You are the lid to cover the secret.
I am like an extraordinary dish while you are the special guest to savour it
......
Ujjal Mandal, India
On a spring morning the sweet
smell of newly clad blossoms
coated with dew and honey,
I saw a maiden tugging
a ivory comb through her long
and smooth tresses
beneath a tree;
I approached to her.
......
I have taken up reading poems again
to steal from them when words leave my company,
For I will try, and try again to write something that comes ot as a part ot me
though I have none to give
and so I steal, nay, I borrow, and mould them to look like me, to speak like me,
a confused identity, not shackled to the land it came out ot,
going around, rudderless, drawing squiggles on everything
angrily and desperately trying to assimilate.
Who am I trying to fool?
I do not sound worldly. I have not suffered enough.
......