Dhuaan (Smoke) The original gazal in Urdu, by Mir Taqui Mir

Something is hidden from the view
behind the smouldering fire and the stifled smoke.
Somewhere are hidden in the mist,
 the embers of someone's  love.

Someone looked long at the sky
and under that anguished gaze
the sky has turned into a blaze
of a fire that yet could not erase
the last remnants of a clear sky.

Every morning at every dawn
the flames arise and redden the  screen,
leave trails of a script half erased
and half still visible. behind the smoke.

A sigh of despair arises in the alley
as if a coffin is being carried to the grave.
The sign of someone's grief
this smoke that you see in the breeze.

Harvest Moon

The eclipse of the Harvest Moon

The harvest moon
with the teasing smile
arose and suddenly brightened the sky.
The big red Moon, the farmer's lamp,
the light shone above the thatched earth,
tired and sleepy after the day's toil.
The moon seemed enormous in the starless sky,
easy, unfettered, the brave  moon of the equinox poise
set upon the path as the martyr moves
to  the certainty of the eclipse, imminent, in an hour's time.

No mist concealed the prospect of the doom.
And the harvest moon, the farmer's delight
was moving alone, with no anchor, with no light
to assure the safety of the journey tonight.
the light that bounced off the surface and rolled down
to the earth in her tremulous anticipation
was soon to be blocked by her shadow.
Sometime the shadow, albeit of love, is the cause of the eclipse
for the journeying moon.
The moon was going to be on his own,
 reddened with the knowledge of being alone,
the Moon entered the decreed zone
with the heart held in silence
and the breath suspended in a quiet retreat
the earth can do nothing but watch
till the brave harvest moon
comes back in the light and shines again 

Untitled XII

An all-night's journey in a moonlit dark
suddenly comes to a day,
a burst of sunlight behind the hill,
the things battled for visibility
fall in a clarity
hidden from the sight;
and where the hill-top was,
 now stands a glorious peak!
A drop of sunshine travels through the thicket and falls at my feet.
I pick it in the folds of my garment,
this little diamond found on the way.

SUSHAMA KARNIK

Attainment  Image Courtesy +Fabien Todescato 

Not seeking delight here and there,
Not indulging in complacent becoming,
Such is the way of the true dweller,
In insubstantial abiding;

Of what good those acquisitions,
Mere adornment to ignorance,
And blinkers of misperceptions,
Of the all pervading non essence;

Should the conceit of attainment,
Obscure your insight,
Renounce it that instant,
With all your might.

Photo courtesy +Nyanamoli Bhikkhu​

AND I AM IN ALL OF THEM...

AND I AM IN ALL OF THEM...

The old-town market-place! I love its smells,
 its colours. I love to feel its dust
in my nostrils and its noise
in the innermost pores of my heart.
Soon the streets will be deserted, the noises cease one by one,
the bargains stop, the buyers and sellers
will collect their belongings and start for home.
The market-place will be emptied of its contents
like a vessel from which water has leaked out.
A silence, like that which follows after a vibrating chord is stilled,
will pervade everywhere.
When an intensely animated and vibrant instrument is silenced,
the listener is plunged into a gloom
which penetrates deep.
It is in such moments of silence
that I would often re-enact the mysteries
 that would not open up.
I wander through the streets of the deserted market-place,
 its intricate mazes, the narrow lanes and alleys,
 where none knows me.
I sit under a tree, pull a shawl around my shoulders,
and a hood to cover my head.
Hardly recognizable now, I sit there, watching the flux of life.
The houses all around, are quietly huddled
 like solid masses of rocks carved from inside,
revealing their interiors filled with quivering light,
and I am in all of them now.

MEDITATIONS

MEDITATIONS

Sometimes we all need
a shelter, an answer,
a quiet moon
and a raging sun.
echoes under domes.
The bicycle riding
under the autumn equinox
I in search of the Word that makes
the mountains move;
I search for the dark the lantern-moon
and the funny acoustics that
conserve the voices that sing,
but do not answer back.

THE WORD WE SEEK

Little lilacs sway in the breeze;
the voices come
tripping lightly over the saffron fields
seen in the light of the dusk.
The vineyards are ready with the glass of wine
the air heavy and drunk
with the pollen
scattered in the wind,
a lunatic mind
of an ethereal being
is flying with the brittle wings.
Tornadoes rise and hit the shores.
The lighthouse stands unmanned.
The night breathes
the mind stands still,
a total moon-eclipse.
the darkness shines with a subtle glow;
untranslatable, the Word we seek

THE ESSENCE

In the deepest cave on
a full-moon-night
his presence glowed like embers speaking
to the mind of a child that had never seen the glow
of embers dying.
"Think of the fire only as Fire
dwelling neither in the flame
nor in the embers dying.
The essence will never die.
A flame gone
in one candle will rekindle
a thousand more before it is gone."

THESE EMBERS
These embers, this live coal,
this fire that in dying glows,
this light seen on fleeting clouds,
is the grace i give; a grace that endures in the passing on,
not in the passing out of the light.
Thousands will come and go;
will live and love and die;
and yet a thousand more will come;
and brighter shine
the living, loving and dying.
Life and love, a candle in the dark, a torch for the passing night
a river of an endless flow.
The river knows and calls;
live in the flow; the river will know.

ARE YOU THE PROPHET...

ARE YOU THE PROPHET...

Drop it, the chant, the rosary of beads;
watch dissolve the mist.
Such a flow of honey,
not honey, not a mist,just a flow,
an alertness, an awareness of being.
The flow expands, but does not sweep you off the feet.
No more fear in the deluge of peace.
Are you lost? Are you there for me?
I no longer need
the comfort of your being.
It expands and carries
all that remains of me.

I come back and hear the voices of agony ;
voices of suicides choking in tunnels,
I know not the cause.

I see a poet being accused
of terrorism, a revolt that he could not carry.
His audience accuse him
of an incomplete mission,
of leaving them dangling in the air
with impotent words of poesy.

"Truth is incorruptible", they had heard him say.
"Show us the Truth; give us hands either to kill
ourselves or kill Truth."

"The cowards cannot kill", he said.
The corrupt cannot kill the incorruptible"
They who were half-way on the way to Truth,
turned back.
From a safe distance they shout,
"Are you the prophet or the terrorist of the day?

Van Gogh's Path

Van Gogh's Path

A day was when he got up from his bed
with the sun on his mind
and the moon in his heart.
Heedless of the hunger
he set out on the path,
just a yellow light tinged
with grey
and a deep blob of blue to his palette's stock.
And the sun that climbed to look at him
was never caught in the landscape of that day
save for the forgotten marks of dreams.
The sun smiled, a wan smile
and hid the tears behind a cloud
And one day the man rose from his tomb and merged with the cloud that came to be called
Vincent Van Gogh.

Sushama Karnik (c)