O my friends, what can you tell me of Love,
Whose pathways are filled with strangeness?
When you offer the Great One your love,
At the first step your body is crushed.
Next be ready to offer your head as his seat.
Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth giving in to the flame,
To be like the deer as she runs toward the hunter’s call,
Like the bird that swallows hot coals for love of the moon,
Like the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies.
Like a bee trapped for life in the closing of the sweet flower.
Mira has offered herself to her Lord.
She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole.
– Meerabai
Translated by Jane Hirshfield
Tagged: imagery, Jane Hirshfield, love poetry, Meerabai, Shyam, translation
- Published:
- February 27, 2011 – 08:00
- Author:
- By Madhu
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What can I say to you? How can I retract
All that that fool, my voice, has spoken –
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
The protocols of friendship broken?
I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn
And hold you in its warmth and keeping.
– Vikram Seth
Tagged: imagery, loss, love poetry, Vikram Seth
- Published:
- February 26, 2011 – 08:00
- Author:
- By Madhu
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
– W H Auden
Tagged: love poetry, mourning, requiem, W. H. Auden
- Published:
- February 25, 2011 – 08:00
- Author:
- By Madhu
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- Comments: