Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Jaye
It is Sunday morning.
In his latest collection of poems, Ashwani Kumar reflects on turbulent times through layered imagery of mythic histories, war, memory, and identity.
It is Sunday morning.
I rehearse her forgotten lament,
tracing grief라이브 바카라 origin
in the flicker of mascara-light,
dancing in her eyes—
like an ancient river
buried beneath shifting silvery sands
I gasp and repeat,
bone by bone, the aging song,
bleeding in the wooden attic.
A pause- the afternoon mist returns.
My body dissolves into silence,
a soft, quiet surrender.
I am free—
like raw silk rippling in mid-air.
She leads me through the forbidden ruins of memory,
Music, perhaps, is the original sin.
A personal mystery deepens—
I must find my nomad tongue.
At the edge of night,
four bearers of palanquin adorn me.
I leave your house, father—
I am going to my beloved라이브 바카라 country.
(Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Jaye was originally composed by Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the 19th-century Nawab of Awadh.)
When I read Kafka,
I dream of mystics
making love with silk-worm beasts.
For unknown reason, my mendicant manhood
slips into chaos—
an animal instinct of self-love awakens.
Her wild eyes, red with desire,
trace saffron tattoos across her small breasts.
She whispers, “History repeats itself.”
I can’t say if it라이브 바카라 true,
but only Hippie and Hippopotamus know—
A dead nun, a decadent poet,
worth more than past or future,
burning on the pyre of anonymous sins.
Mathematical streets unfold—
fabricated childhood tales,
butterflies eating butterflies.
Slowly, she grows fond of fanatics,
gathering remnants of a lost poem
in the paddy field.
Drowned in the carnival of candlelights,
I drape my body in stones,
open my navel to the adolescent dark—
a slow-motion world of perfect happiness,
treacherous, and torturous.
Beneath the purple sky of Baltimore,
the sea carries the scent of burnt tobacco and peaches.
Aging ships slowly sail into the lisping mouth of the harbour,
laden with dead marble stones.
Imprisoned between water and bridge,
turtles and trouts murmur vanishing tales
of railroad strikers and the city라이브 바카라 hunger for bread.
Silently, the sun sinks into my skin,
like the sonorous pieces of broken glass.
I follow my son down the stairs of the red-roofed museum,
releasing myself slowly from the dormant earth within.
Unravelling the lessons of his physics class,
my son says,
“Don’t chase the dark-dazzled theory of relativity—
just walk alone; the god of surprise awaits you.”
In summer gowns,
we relit the memories of our ancestors,
whose bones decay in the land of olives.
I wonder—
is it the embers of twilight,
or the ashes of lunatic moonbeams,
that stain the air with sinless truths?
The mirrors in my house weep—
I surrender to my Ustad라이브 바카라 grieving ragas,
filling my lungs with eucalyptus라이브 바카라 guilt.
Where is Buddha now?
Will he revive me like a pure melody,
or leave me wandering through the shadows of time?
(for Rama Pradhan)
I hear her voice—
whispers of ripened red wheat,
speaking like a wild peacock
on a distant Texas ranch.
Beneath the shades of large, lusty lanterns,
she weaves wandering memories
with threads of gold and emerald,
and I see days and nights
lazily frolicking like dusky dolphins in her kitchen.
Behind the glowing muslin Buddhist hills in Patna,
she sings ancient wedding songs
in Raag Shudh Kalyan with a Caribbean lilt.
I remember her harvesting jasmine blooms
and crystal dews in her moonlit summer courtyard,
while bronze gods and goddesses
await surrendering to her glories.
It is spring—
she breathes the scent of lotus leaves and Magahi paan,
and I watch rainbows sinking into rainbows,
as seasons sail through the veiled lights of the harbor
(In celebration of the 90th birthday of Rama Pradhan, beloved mother of Dr. Ajit Pradhan.)
I smell summer grass,
soaked in the memory of sailors and soldiers’ dead bodies.
Aroused by the dark perfume of an uncertain future,
I hide behind her golden-brown swollen breasts,
licking the riddle of God in a diamond shop.
"What are you doing?" she asks,
as I taste the raw pulse of my own tongue within her mouth.
A strange, lingering scent of her spiced skin
spreads like an aging midnight prayer,
and I inhale, desperately,
the unruly, erotic aroma of crumbling ancient rock-temples.
Waging my solitary war against unknown fears and fantasies,
I meditate in the shade of blossoming silver oak flowers in my garden,
retreating into her language,
saturated with orgies of lovers.
Slowly, the moon bleeds into the sea,
and the excited mob of barbers and barbarians
suffocates me with their kisses.
I tear my native skin with a blunt knife,
only to find myself in a prison,
handcuffed to the smell of her rusted bridal mirror.
Here, neither spring nor autumn exists,
only the remains of the burnt smell of grieving seasons,
wandering aimlessly through the violent sand deserts of cactus.
(Ashwani Kumar is a poet, writer and professor in Mumbai. Widely published, anthologised and translated into several Indian and foreign languages, his most recent collection of poems is titled Map of Memories.