The glasses looked back into the eyes:
the eyes
two wild lakes that never dry up in any
drought
and though they overflow
never fill up.

When a drop falls
the depth is sky-high
when a wave trembles
the width spans the earth.
In the mind-jungle that sprouts
and blooms
with the changing seasons
lie stony secrets of springs
yet another forest of mystery!
On the dreamy blue where fish and trees
rejoice swimming
the desert-gesture of summer!

They brim over in a night’s time
and turn into torrents; in them
all the filth is washed off wounds healed
and friends end their lives; in the water
into which everything is renounced
sometimes great poems are written.

During unusual hours, it seems someone
is bathing;
try going near on hearing the lapping of waves,
and there, it’s only the desolate bathing ghat
the jalasamadhi1 9 of moonlight and
flowers!

Once during the day, unexpectedly, as, tired
and thirsty, birds and animals return, perhaps
the dirt would have dried in the eye sockets

shoulder blades touching shoulder blades
would perhaps gasp
and skulls grazing skulls remain asleep.

With all hopes evaporated and all kindness
withdrawn
to the slave eyes are burning wounds.

Somewhere in the sea
or the sky
in some history-less corner,
in the heart
or in the brain
at some place where we bury everything
with the remains of villages and cities
destroyed in dream-quakes,
the apple of the eyes surfaced like treacherous rocks
in the ebbing tide.

The cursed valleys where lunatic whirlwinds
ramble
the sinned fields where poisoned rivers were
cremated
some pale peacock feathers rainbow-fragments
a port long forgotten by sailors.

Day in and
day out
in all directions without respite,
future or past, to all places of
refuge,
with madness and sores the descendants of light
wandered;
and after a dip in the papanasini20
of tears
went back to black holes like decrepit old stars.
In the sky stained with blood and ash
only black suns remained.

II

A pair of glasses lie orphaned on the table.
Closing on the face of life
and opening on the face death
its eyes have become the doors
of some strange riddle.