Raga Lalit: Motion of Wish

Lalita, charming in her innocence,
is bright like gold. And while she
holds a lute, a cuckoo perches
on her lotus hand.
She is seated beneath the Wishing-tree,
her breasts all unadorned,
a thousand times desirable.
---- Chatvarimshach’hata-raga-nirupam (page 13)

The sky has cleared but it has not
lightened the unstable muck flying through
your void.

There’s morning in the things around you
but not in your heart.

For your closed eyes,
this morning is born of hidden wounds,
and of long forgotten smiles.
And your breasts become a breath
of inviolable distances

Through a glass that magnifies
your loss,
I see the lines of your spectrum
shifting red.
With the daylight about to expand
it thins out
and flies far apart.

You wish your honeyed colors
to restore the liquid longings of your heart.
You wish your pains to turn into ecstasies,
and your hopes stretch across to dawn.

If you wish, I will perform the day
just as I will perform the dream.
I will smile the first morning rays
into an emaciated face in the
photograph on your side table.

Let each submerged regret of yours
flicker above the
nothingness that rims your sleep.

Let the un-guessed abyss
break into a spray on the beach.

Let me turn your dusty visions
into a brilliant shower of colored dreams.

Brahmanand Singh
(Part of a series called Raga Poems,
read on the 8th Aug 2004 meet)