End is silence, at least for whom it is the end. Those left behind may talk of loss, parting, or closures. What follows usually is grief or relief, and prayers. Community support and condolences, mourning and memorials are part of ritualistic expressions. But pain and memories have a way of seeping into the being. They percolate and erupt in unexpected moments and places. Poetry can speak of a dear kinship with the end. Poets across centuries and cultures have courted the inevitable end in exquisitely crafted and poignant verse. Not only in its theme and meaning but also in its very form and structure, poetry is a mirror unto death. Every line of a poem comes with a pause, a brief end. The gap between lines waits for meanings to emerge. In a poem, word by word we ascend or descend, leaning on the high wall of the unknown. The utterances are padded with the lining of silence. Each line marks the passage of time.
Minutes fill-up hours
Pass, days are spent.
Weeks fizzle, months
fly-by years fade away.
People retire and die.
Some relationships are forged on the anvil of the daily unspoken. There is no expectation of voluble affinity or declaration of the bond. Only silence, which is a ‘given’, and not always the quietness of ease and flow. Sometimes, there may be a chance for reckoning. Else, time and rhyme, both, fade with finality. Questions and reflections await unpacking.
Dad
Now that we are together
Alone
In our silence
I might as well ask.
What was it, Dad,
to be a man like you?
How did you cope with it
From the inside?
What was it, Dad, to be burdened
when young? To be responsible
for a family? – Relationships
as expectations, children’s fees,
clothes, and tantrums!
What was it, Dad, to be bound
to duties? Even your pleasures
and little joys framed inside it?
What was it, Dad,
in your post-office passbook,
that you peered into several times a day?
What was it, Dad,
When I was leaving, and you
looked at me earnestly,
that you wanted to say?
Were you disappointed?
Did you experience joy?
I seem to see toil as far
back as I can stretch
and then the pains,
of partings, silences
and then more pain these last years
wanting to talk but
no words, needing help, but
no stick could take the weight.
What is it, Dad
in this shared silence
you are asking of me?
Dad half-smiled, with his eyes
covered. Just for a moment,
he tightened the eyelids
a water drop trickled from the right eye.
Then, with a sigh, he was gone.
We look for answers. They are not articulated. We must stay with this sense of diffident closure and make notes for ourselves from what we hear.
The warbler sings alone.
Such tragedies
Silent Humans.
When the final goodbyes and unexpected sobs stop, a longer silence descends. It is woven not only with a lingering sense of absence but also with the weft of what has been. By and by, the inevitable – what is present, has to be acknowledged. There is also the sense of time, rocking gently in an old chair or a new cradle, a seeming movement towards what could be.
My mother’s smell
Lingers
In the ayurvedic oil
she used for the old bones
In the warm blankets
made from her cotton sarees
In the black and white photographs
of her marriage.
I taste it in memories
and in touch of things
— pastel-fresh wash
colouring everything.
The green chilli chutney,
The soft hello, the firm no,
the enveloping hug.
These deeds and words
come from me, yes
But they are my mother’s
Indelible watermark
making me every day.
In the long silence after a death, the presence of the mundane is felt quietly and accepted gratefully. This affirmation of existence touches our homes and relationships. But we may slip back into the endless busy forgetfulness, unless we periodically repose our actions and identities in the palms of the everyday quietude. We need this hand holding. Gently and eventually absence seems acceptable and loss becomes palpable.
Sometime
Life’s difficulties
Offer a loss.
Am sure you’ve felt
the pangs of that
Sometime.
I lost some money
and the burden to protect it.
I lost some friends
with that went some pride.
I lost some praise,
as all praise, it was on shaky foundations
With it went down the drain
the need to please.
I lost fear and the seat
reserved on the train to success.
And I sat next to the beggar
near the toilet door
in the same train
free to alight or stay.
I lost some habits
they annoyed others and bought me benefit
— my grasping was a loser!
I lost parents, companions, loved ones
with them, the need to control!
I have not lost everything
as someone once did in a flood or fire
and walked to utter loss-less-ness
Even in the rebuilding of it all.
May I lose, everyday
a bit of my self
loosely held together.
As the midnight
waits to lose, sure-shot
to the dawn.
By and by, a reconciliation with loss and end may take root. But the true taste of it depends on the maturing of the ability to ‘see’ the nature of being and existence. The mighty Buddha taught the wisdom of seeing impermanence with a humble and wise understanding. A sincere seeker and student must align with this practice to make the mind malleable. As perception evolves and widens, we may see with all the senses and deeper eyes. This is the innate artistry of the feminine. The sharp and fluid feminine principle adores the manifest reality, while being equally at ease in perceiving the layers that saturate the external. It is a power that leads understanding with kind grace. Those who see with the eyes of wisdom and compassion are committed to silence in a deep way. In poetry, this has come from the realm of women poets who carve the unsaid and shape it in a dazzling yet wearable insight. They are the ladder makers, carpenters, and workers skilled in singing about the inexpressible.
Women Poets
You soundlessly carve
by mere seeing.
Edges of the eyes
moist and warm
the gaze steadfast.
You catch the bounce
of the unsaid in a whisper,
announce, rage, sing
things as they are
everything. You share
the unheard only you can
share with us.
It takes time, solitude, and growing up to fathom the meanings of the unsaid. The autumnal self looks upon things, leans on some words, weeds out some others, and embraces silence. It is a practice of awareness and ease. Life becomes an affair of precious preparation in words, concepts, and practice. When the time comes, will we be able to hop beyond with ease and joy? The sincere and daily yearning for this kind of inevitable silence is difficult, alluring, frightening, and necessary.
Let’s wind-up the drama now.
It’s not him or her or them or others
It’s you, darling, that has to go
You will be gone from here
Dead. End. Sooner or later.
Alone. Slowly drying up
Sinking.
Or may be without realising,
Kaput – in a matter of a moment.
It may be graceful,
Or you may protest violently
Your weak limbs flailing
Or mind uneasy, racing.
Or relaxed.
But go, you will.
As common sense and wise women
Have repeatedly said, again and again –
No matter what your bank balance (zero or uncountable)
No matter your progeny (golden, beautiful or crazy)
No matter the value of the mahogany you sleep on
Or the sandalwood for your burning…(more likely an electric incinerator for you!)
None of it will matter.
You will be dead
Like the mosquito – the one that you swatted
With your very own hand
You will be done with your buzzing!
So, for now –
Don’t say anything.
Waste no precious breath
Till the final hour comes.
Keep a seeming control
On life.
Practice parting with words
Regularly!
Eventually, you may come to love it —
If that happens, you would have gone
On like a poem without words.
A leaf falling on the lake still.
Such is the preciousness of the unspoken. Yet, as we relentlessly dwell in the realm of the spoken, we may make friends with poems. They remind us of the connections of this frail life and share with us the visions of the unexplored. Thus we celebrate poems, their existence, utterances, and silences.
Poems are my
perfect medicine.
Mixed equally
words with silence
are great tonic,
my closest kin.
Poems clear
the daily din.
They rhyme
without a reason
celebrate reflection
soundlessly still.
Poems give voice
to feeling, love
to living, eyes
to meaning, they remind
parting, cherishing
everyone, everything.
Poems are my
perfect medicine.
Practical antidote
to my unlit being.
A wrap-around
for my decayed skin.