you are always beautiful

you are always beautiful
and little birds wake up and sing to your fruits on blue mornings like these which are like the Blue Danube
i've never been to Danube
but i've seen blue lakes and wild mountain-springs
i have jumped in some of them, and i have stared at broken sunsets on big wild rivers
i know of a poet who had seen broken red bits of sunset riding piggyback on the waves while he was waiting for his Wheel to return
it doesn't matter whether it returned or not
and it doesn't matter where and how the wheel turned and where and how wheels turn
except when they do and when little birds sing to your fruits which are the colours of mornings and sunsets and Blue Danube where i've never ever been to
and then i don't think of storms like i didn't think of storms that night

there's no war in poetry these days, and there's no peace either
Don Juan and Don Quixote take lessons of love from Lenin
but there's no love in hospitable maternity-wards of cities where they've learned to sell love for money and sell money for love
even you stay in a city but they can't touch you
because you are beautiful and because birds sing to you
hands of great anarchs send their breeze of love to caress your flowers
and your flowers are big and red, they start blooming
on the first full-moon night of Magh when they sing for Magha-Karam all night in the forests of Jharkhand that are barely intact, like their songs
they keep blooming as folks gather for Magha-Magul by the shores of Titas which is still a river's name
and they gather the flowers of Glory Bower
the same flowers that wept in your silver anklet when you danced like a torn wagtail in the palace of Indra the king of gods
and i was bitten by a big black snake
which a poet had called Black Divinity on the 15th of August 1973
but things are different now
and your flowers are big and red
and they bloom in your grand, fulsome beauty on the full moon night of love when springtime blazes the wanton night and even the moon is red
and your fruits are for the birds to sing to when the world is Blue Danube and the morning star has stopped burning in lonely anger all night
i stare at red, blue, green, yellow and white flags all night
i don't know if the Red Flag will bring me freedom or if Green Tara will

but when i was close to you and the fires were strange all around, woman,
i hadn't thought of freedom
i hadn't thought of Kabir's Bhakti or Lalan's lamp,
i hadn't thought of Bakunin's anarchy or Che's revolution
i hadn't thought how it would be if Tarashankar's Nitai makes wild love to Bulgakov's Margarita
i hadn't thought how the earth turns and how the sun burns
i hadn't thought if starlight can communicate with the smart wisdom of ghosts
i had talked a bit about starlights though, and i think about mists coming out of leaves of trees and turning into clouds and rivers of the world
and you had talked of being in a new city which could have not been new, Amarcord
and i was close to you, not close enough to feel your breathes rising with the magic of the night, but enough to think of dangling down the wheels and clockhands of time and dancing, though i can't dance in any manner that is considered to be aesthetically pleasing, but it didn't really matter then
and it doesn't really matter now,
except that when at the crack of dawns like these the skies are very blue and the birds are very chirpy
i stare from the fogged realms between sleep and torpor,
wanting to fill the world with poetry
i walk to your river and to your tree and they become the trees and rivers of the world
and they become endless roads weaving their way through the misty climes of life and the undisturbed universe to the unknown, shivery mokam, or samadhi, or whatever

so, that's how i am
and you are always beautiful