Fitting it in is a breeze!

Freedom is a short word, shapeless like water;

I can pour it into my throat in a draught

and it quenches one thirst, but leaves the other -

tackling that requires more than just wordcraft.

Freedom – it washes into my body

like an ocean tide, and leaves too, just as

the ocean does. The sands littered with rocky

debris, bottlecaps and butts, seaweedfuzz

beached and helplessly immobile till a wave

is moontugged back again. Freedom is a short

word – it fits into my knuckles, the shape

of my lips, the chipped tooth of truth, a sport

of time. Freedom is just a two-syllable

word, it can fit in anywhere, no trouble.

Happy Independence Day to you if you are celebrating 70 years of self-rule! Jai Hind!

Dusty and unscheduled and unlit

Lately, I have given up forced schedules -

of voices and gravity, unbroken rules

governing when the windows might open,

when they must shut, when words must be spoken,

a life of finite couplets and modules.

I’ve let the door stand ajar in dust-storms

I’ve piped in dreams of sand and low landforms,

orchestras of fallen leaves, autumn-coloured.

Led merry festivals of haphazard

words into worlds far away from their homes.

And I’ve also let my voice go back to sleep -

the freedom that’s in silence is for keeps,

and when it’s finally woken up again,

I’ve asked it to hold its breath and just listen

to chuckling rivers, to candles as they weep.

The winds have blown out my lamps, and unlit

they stood for whole Diwalis, not just minutes.

Their darkness and their beauty were unsurpassed.

Forget small flames, even stars do not last.

I’ve come across a darkness that’s infinite.

If you’ve stopped here by chance and wondered why

the door’s unlatched, the golden dust’s knee-high -

well, now you know the reason: I’m not absent

I am only doing what I was meant

to do: be still and let all things pass by.

Fearless (Lucky 786)

Where is this place where the mind is fearless?
every path seems to swerve and lead away
though I try still to hold my head high

can eyes be dried, just like that, tears put away
jerked on puppet strings of love, helplessly high?
can happy love ever walk straight and fearless?

it’s a long road from here, the sun’s fiercely high
no use hoping the timid heart will be fearless
when the teeth of love and loss both gnaw it away

Never fearless, no; but fear still swatted away; and love’s banner held high.

 

Of course, the inspiration for this is Tagore’s famous poem, his dream of an independent, new India waking up free from intellectual or political suppression and fear.  It is still quoted and read widely not just in Bengal but in all free-thinking societies.  His own translation doesn’t do the original justice.  Rhymed poetry can’t really be translated unrhymed and still retain the flavour of the original. Also his Bengali version is more robustly violent, the last line in Bengali reads “strike my country awake” rather than the tamer “let”, but the English was probably watered down for audiences abroad in pre-independence India.  Here it is again:

 

Mind Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.





I wrote this post sometime ago, and my verse is really about the personal fear that stems from vulnerability - the fear of losing loved ones, of changes, of the lack of control over our own fates. 






Shared with poets at dVerse where the prompt today is "fear"