WHAT LOVE IS

Love is not a dew, sun, rain or flood;

Or a scrap of paper thrown by someone, some time;

Or not the words stained on the wrinkled sheet;

Not a secret to be revealed to those who do not

love;

Not an effort to answer the question:

what is love?

It is a moment,

It is the flier on the sparrow wing

Shivering to sleep before the dawn;

Cool emerging from nowhere;

Passion of the heart

Shining a star in the edge of the sky

A symphony of the celestial singer

Coming with heart-rending cool

In the predawn moments;


The heart withering slowly like Sahasrarapadma*;

The soft chirpings;

Tunes of melody hummed by the idle yawns;

The sun and sparrow swimming in the lakes of

truths

In tune with the waking of warmth;

The poems read so far melt as dawn, the beginning;

The murmurs and whispers of the growing morns;

One’s view of another on the other side of the lake

yonder beneath the sky;

Moving in the crowds alone to work sites;

Flames spreading calm of daytime;

Desires for the never-coming rains;

Prayers not to rain;

Feverish bewilderment in the mingling

And melting of hutments and fields;

Gasps of frightened ones in the muddy fields;

Boiling in mid-noon heat;

Pretending like an idiot;

Then cooling in quail’s songs

Pouring through fences in the evening sun

The rhyming skies of twilight

Spreading Sindur** on the drums of life;

Night falls on; I feel

Time has come to dream again; You feel

Dream has come again;

Yeah, if we remain,

Pain pouring into us slowly, very slowly,

It fills us slowly, very slowly,

We feel mutually flowing,

Seeing not seeing,

Aware, not aware

Standing among wild plants,

Not able to remain where we are, still we remain,

Sitting idle and introspecting,

Ready to speak our hearts fulfilled,


Yet incapable to reveal ourselves,

Lying down with the feeling,

Had there been fore-births!

When all had been said,

Then, know you, We are in love,

Even if we don’t know that,

Even if a word is not transmitted between us,

Even if we have not had glance of each other,

Even if prose or verse hasn’t bloomed, It is love,

Love between you and me,

Know, love has tied us in knots.

*Sahasrarapadma=a lotus with a thousand petals

.**Sindur=purple powder spread on head and hair

in the middle ; indicative of married women.