Companions

My dog passed away two weeks ago. he was like a little brother to me. I have written this poem about him. In it, I've thrown everything I have ever learned about poetry, from contemporary talk to Tagore's poetry to Sufi Muslim devotional poetry to French Impressionist poetry to my own style and thoughts. All of these influences were necessary to give justice to this complex, passionate, and profound poem about love and loss. I hope reading it moves you as much as writing it moved me.

Companions
I.
On a long ago evening, we came home with you, a child whose unfathomable gaze none understood.
We asked you to rest at the end of the arduous journey, at the end of your search for a home, but you did not understand.
How could you understand, you who ran by lonely streets in the dark of the night,
You who hid away from the world’s eyes at daybreak?
Rest, remain with us, and love us, we had then told you in vain, for you turned away, wanting and yet fearing the endless road you had left behind.

I outstretched my arms, waiting for you to approach the awaiting embrace.
Yet you gazed with uncertain eyes that tore my heart
For you were too timid to advance forth to the arms of love, and yet, too afraid to step back.
We gazed at each other with longing, for I did not have a brother and you did not have a home.

Painful apprehension in each heart, we all left for the outdoors on a day long gone by.
In relief, you played once again like a child, for you had at last left a house of strangers and walked again among roads you had long traveled.
Then you forgot the fear of a strange house, for you were among the blue of the infinite sky, among the greens of the trees we took a walk by.
You feared the world, yet it took you in its everlasting embrace.

We had long waited so long with outstretched hands, despairing that you would ever come.
At last you approached us, and we only gazed at you, rejoiced at the awakening of love.
For you had left a house of strangers but returned to the home of your loved ones.
You had feared before the world outside, made up of lonely roads and endless skies, but returned to it with the frenzied delight of a child.

Ever since, my heart wondered at its own happiness.
Every morning I saw a mournful gaze of your eyes as I left
Every night I saw rapture overflowing your heart as I returned
And I wondered even then, what a grace it is that I had one such as you to love.

II.
But even boundless joy must find its end.
Death arrives, and we weep and plead, but all is in vain.
The world does not know the meaning of awakening love in the beloved one’s eyes
The heavens do not know the sufferings and joys that overwhelm men under their immovable presence.

Now, in our longest journey, we walk with you in a silence fleeting but powerful.
Tears arise but we look away from you as they do, fearing they may do you harm.
You gaze aimlessly at the road, at trees passing by, at endless skies
For none of these have meaning for one who has abandoned all hope in them and given it all unto us.

Desperately we look into your eyes, wondering if the parting has indeed come.
“Stay with us!” we beg you, as though the choice was yours!
Yet slowly but surely we see the banks of the river where you will be borne away.
In our hearts is inconsolable sorrow; in yours in boundless peace.

Slowly but surely we approach the river;
slowly but surely we approach the End.
Yet you do not speak as we approach as you rest in the laps of love, in the last embraces,
You feel them and love them, you are made more peaceful by them, yet you no longer respond as you did before.

At last we have come to the shore.
We can say nothing for our voices are broken by sobs of sorrow,
Yet our hearts are full of silent pleading, “Must you leave us? Must you go?”
“But all things must leave! All things must go!” cries back the cruel mind to the despairing heart.

By the river’s bend, you are borne away by tides into the mists beyond.
In your face is submission and peace.
“Oh God!” I wonder. “Do the living despair for themselves or for the dying?
For why would we weep so when you remain silent?”

But no, even you suffer! I see the last look upon your face,
A gaze I have never seen upon any living face,
A look of longing too painful for any living heart.
Such is the gaze on your face as you begin to disappear in the mist.

I wish to console you, no longer knowing if you hear, and off into the mists I cry:
“Do not despair! You do not feel the caress of my hands, but feel the caress of my eyes!”
I see you resting your head upon the boat, the same pleading in your eyes.
Again I shout, but you disappear in the mist, and I know not if you heard.

My companions weep and tell me timidly, “Why despair alone? Come home with us and let us comfort each other.”
My speechless silence offers no answer, and they leave, telling me that they will be home when I return.
All of them cry, but I cannot weep, for my heart is benumbed by grief to see your last glance.
In the solemn silence of the dawn, I sit alone by the banks of the river, remembering the longing of your gaze as you left.

The same cry that I had uttered rings in the river, in the trees, in the endless skies.
The earth clings in vain to the cloud that gives it shade, but Eternity wrests the cloud out of the earth’s embrace.
The cloud gazes sorrowfully at the earth, and the earth cries the same plea to the faraway cloud that I shouted then.
The timeless cry plea is uttered again and again, but none know whether the beloved one has heard.

I walk down the road, hearing the same notes of the timeless plea reverberate in the skies.
A child untamed by the world cries for its mother, not knowing where she has gone.
Yet the world drags off the beloved and laughs at the child!
Throughout humanity and throughout its sorrow resonates the timeless cry, but the beloved one has already left!


III.
Under the cool shade of a tree, I at last stop to rest.
The sun rises, its brilliance shedding light upon all who are in darkness.
I gaze at it, and call to it, “Come to me! I do not know who you are! But come nevertheless!”
Slowly and softly it rises, and I weep, knowing not whether in grief or in ecstasy.

Before me, the music of daybreak stretches its arms and embraces the earth,
Everywhere the Infinite awakens from its slumber.
Across time and silence, the Infinite music of the Eternity breaks forth with the awakening of the skies.
Man finds his beloved no longer within his uncertain arms, but within the steady embrace of the Infinite.

I have wept for you, but where have you gone?
Like a fool, I wept thinking that you had vanished, and not knowing you had simply left one room to go to another.
For the heart weeps in remembering the look of pain in the beloved’s eyes as he left the bank of the river,
but knows not the awakening bliss with which the beloved alighted upon the other shore!
-Aritro Biswas

Strangers in the Night: Audition for Arcadia High Chanteurs

Revelry of the Night

In the quiet night,
love touches the heart of a musician.

And he sings without abandon, for all his joys and all his sorrows
are based on a single inspiration, the revelry of the night around.

Where do these melodies go?
Whereof do these songs rise?

Yet they touch the hearts of all in the night,
and surges of life accompany this outburst of love.

Entranced by his music, fountains of white stone weep for their lovers lost,
And the poet laughs, for he finds that the music expresses his deepest longings.

The hidden creatures of the night too begin life in the forest with triumphant ecstasy,
and the night is deluged in an ocean of love so divine.

Dreamers on the river

Men walk upon the treaded path, forged by the uncertain hands of men,
And at last, finding it too human, seek to travel upon the river, forged by eternity itself.

The throb of everlasting life is heard in the silent rush of the currents,
And the dreams of silent, sleeping  people are carried forth by currents with purposeful destination.

Dreamers cast their dreams into the currents in their slumber,
And with the assurance of water and life, dreams grow.

With steady assurance, currents carry their dreams to other dreamers upon faraway banks,
And there they flower in the minds of others with the promise of life.

Man, seeing no respite in the endless path, at last finds assurance in the currents,
So infused with self-purpose, and at last casts his hopes upon the river forged so long ago.

O Freedom, my Father

O Freedom, my Father
Why do you row the Boat alone?
Let us paddle together
through the Terrible Storms
Do not whiff the scent of Death in the Air
Close your ears to the voices of Demons carried by the Wind.

Smell the flowers of our Mother’s Land
Hear the song of the common people.

O Freedom, my Father
Why do you steer the Boat alone?
Let us paddle together
through the Flashes of Lightning
Shut your eyes to the sight of the Welcoming Bed
Cover your ears to the songs of songbirds.

Behold the sight of the Mother in Chains
Hear Her sobs and Her chains clanking.

O Freedom, my Father
Why do you row the Boat alone?
Let us paddle together
through the Tombs of the Asleep
Walk quietly so the Enemy does not hear
Clasp your Hands in mine so that we may warm each other

For are not thou the Seed, and I the Bearer?
Are not I the Candle, and thou the Flame?

O Freedom, my Father
Why do you row the Boat alone?
Let us paddle together
Silhouetted in the Dark of the Night
Draw the sword so the Enemy hears
Shout so the Nation hears
Hoist the Flag so that the Sun may rise again.

The Lone Soldier and The Battlefield

In the desolate battlefield
the split boughs of trees bow in obeisance to the ground
while men too lay buried in their flagging strength
The only face that is unbowed,
the lone soldier looks at the sky for solace.

All hatred now unwound, friends and foes sleep together in the dust.
The lone soldier leaves them to slumber in the cradle of death.

All distinction now shed away by the Soldier and His battlefield,
Within the field all are embraced equally in the maw of death,
as foes in life become comrades in sleep,
while the soldier walks silently by their graves, impersonal in his grief.

Rising above the wreck of battle,
the soldier shovels away the tainted dirt
and buries the sleeping soldiers of the battlefield.

After the battle has left misery in its wake, a greater battle – that of sacrifice - has engulfed the field
As in denial of death's very portent,
the soldier seeks to undo the desolation of the field,
his shovel becomes his only hope of sacrifice,
as while the soldiers he buries slumber tumultuously in abandonment of the soul,
the soldier labors with only an ardor for life.
As comrade and foe destroy each other, the soldier emerges the sole victor of the battlefield
and quietly proclaims his victory over death.