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A thread is being spun by Rati Saxena

A thread is being spun

A seed is germinating

An earth/ a ground is waking up

A sky transforms into a tree

And a little sparrow/ bird

Flies down and sits on my

Left hand’s finger

 

*

 

You, who are a piece of light,

You, the dew on the tip of a thorn

A sprout on the parched up earth

As a secret on goosebumps

Like sharpness of vision

 

You have come to me

Against all souls

Which were severed in the womb

 

For those thousands of sounds

Which sank into deep waters

 

An earthworm enters a deep burrow

A conch writes a word

The thread of a web

Snap… it’s broken

 

*

 

I want to read

The letters of dreams

Written on your eye lids

And learn the script

Written long before

The Indus valley civilization

Written with streams of rivers

Between mountains and rivers

I want to color my faded paintbrush

With the colors of your dreams

Rapt by trees from the skies

Before taking birth in the world

 

I want to write a poem

That has been soaked

In the gurgle of your inner soul

Like an oil wick with Dancing flames

 

And so rouse

The Anahad naad (heavenly music)

Hidden deep in my navel

 

*

 

How do you recognize

The tunes and hidden Rasas ( enchantments )

The mind and the spirit

The sounds

Produced against classicism

How do they become as sweet as milk

As soon as they reach you

Your eye lids become heavy

As you listen to my lullaby

 

How do you weave dreams

With the words of sleep

And how do you find

The meaning of those

That are not there

But are spread like

A tunnel maze

Up to the moment in the past

when you and I

converge into a point…

 

I am perplexed!

*

 

I spin your cry

As a thread

I embroider your smile

On to the interlaced weave

I then see your mother’s face in you

Who stretches her feet under the sun light

Counting the moments of peace

Eyes closed

 

She sat spinning

The golden rays of the sun

I have always seen her from a distance

With least interest

With strange enmity

Couldn’t understand the stiffness in her fingers

Or the pain in her knees

I never longed for her hug

 

You smile between the cries

I kiss you on your forehead

As if kissing the paining fingers

Of your mother

 

Mother’s half woven sheet

Descends down four steps

And sits on my lap

 

I find in my cupboard

Two masks

Almost 30 years old,

A little dirty but firm as new

 

Your mother dusts them

Decorates them

And hangs then on the wall

They begin to smile

Freed from a 30-year imprisonment

 

I wonder if

Mother too smiled the same way

While getting up from the cot

And hanging on the wall

 

You learnt to respond to the smile

 

I want to get rid of

All the debris of this world

And remove all the nails

So that your smile can

Spread like morning sunrays

 

*

 

History

I don’t know the history

That you wrote on the horses during war

 

I don’t accept the books

That test you on religion and spirituality

 

I ignore all cobwebs

They constrict my neck

With their red and blue noose

While I feel the whip of the Rajiya Sultan

Lakshmibai’s horse’s neighing

Seeps in my mind

 

I like to think

Of all the brackets

That still confine the people

Of the drugs

That have fused our brains

Of that shriek

That is still stuck in the throat

 

History

Has never been my friend

 

*

 

I did tell you

That you are a parcel of sun rays

I will close you in my fist

And then open it, so slowly

That you can weave a silky thorn

On your body

Then I will toss you gently

Towards the sky

So that you can open your wings yourself

 

You shall fly

Without forgetting to crawl

Then crawl while flying

 

And search for all the answers

To all those queries

In the eyes of your mother

Like question marks

Moments before her death…..

 

 

Rati Saxena

Rati Saxena explains in a letter (6.9.2012) that there is a deep philosophy behind this poem. It relates to the fact that in India women or rather girls when still in the womb are considered to be inferior to men and therefore tradition would have it that it is better to kill that girl in the womb than to let it live. On hand of an old saying, she explains what tutelage to tradition means:

"in Indian culture it was said- once you leave your father's house, you should not come back, and also once you have entered the house of your husband, you can leave it only after your death - you came on four shoulders (in the olden days the bride used to travel to the bridegroom's house on a Palaki and which means a cart carried by four man. and after death also four man should carry the cart with the dead body on it). In other words, the woman could only leave her husband also only on four shoulders."

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