On the avenues as night falls And as crowds jostle and seek entry Into smoky night clubs, theatres, stores, And countless signs blink, amputated neon eyes, Now opening, now closing, now opening again,

Over the long reflections of shadow and light Caught in the long mirrors that roads become After evening rain, a man is walking. His heart is pinned over his shirt, as if it were The first bloody medal he was awarded

For unflinchingly taking the wounds of love And loss. He is walking, beyond the city limits, Beyond the suburbs, beyond the railroad tracks, To a place where the sun and moon are her immense eyes Of black pearl, and the monsoon clouds her loosened hair.

He is walking to his final battlefield: Layla, Her body, an unmarked grave of fallen men.

[1]

By the creek The necessary suffering Of love is in evidence – These waters feed the fish More religiously than most Religions can or do.

[2]

Little bird out of your nest, What is the name and shape Of the God you invoke In your squawks?

Or does the mystery, Which we foolish men Furiously partition into endless hollow Shells and rarely encounter face to face, Stand indivisible in your world?

Little bird, teach me again about The spasms you feel in your unformed wings, Those of hunger and those of love.

[3]

I come back from the afternoon into the shaded cool of this room. I was walking in a forest, urging my soul, that blunt instrument I have been given to perform the autopsy of everyday mysteries, into an awakening of itself.

I stopped at the point where Lullwater falls and saw in the shallows just behind the rock ledge a shoal of fish; silver bodies with edges tinted in crimson, dark bones in standing in relief against their flesh - they carry their shadows within their skins – travel further and further into the green woods, which were trapped in the water before it fell over rock as foam, spray and noise. One always hears water fall at the top of the hill before one sees it and then reaches it at the bottom. This perhaps is also the trick to reach God, which the mad people among us have perfected.

[1]

Your eyes hoard a few fragrant Secrets. More beautiful than you Stand your thoughts.

You talk and somewhere flowers shoot Forth. Do clouds meet the mountain Ranges, somewhere in your eyes? Even your silences are your language.

[2]

It is again that night, That night of dreams. And all night long, I shall dream of you, All night long.

Tonight in your innocent sleep If you see a dream, Summon me to that room Hidden behind the curtains Of your eyelids.

These dreams are of glass, And will pierce one’s eyes. So lift them gently with Your eye lashes.

[3]

These days my feet hardly Touch the ground. Tell me Do you ever encounter me, flying in the wind?

[4]

With simple fables and night rain The valleys are full. How strange my heart is full too!

On the trees leaves, On the leaves water, Water of tears.

Close to each other were our hearts. We had met before, But are still strangers after meetings.

It stops and pauses And then it pours, Mad rain is dancing on the clouds.

[5]

I have left some luggage Behind in your room: Some of those cold winter days And wrapped in one my letters, A night I spent your arms.

Extinguish that night. Return my things.

And from that fall, Sounds of leaves’ Footsteps I still wear Like earrings. That branch We stopped under together Is still spasming in the wind.

Cut down that branch. Return my things.

Under a single umbrella, Caught in sudden rain, We were half wet and half dry. I must have been on the left, For there is my wet heart Lying perhaps under your bed.

Send back that heart. Return my things.

Translated from Hindi Film Song Lyrics