Months ago, on a lively night, a motorcycle took him
Amidst the cryptic roads. It wasn’t he who drove it;
Rather, he drove into the very thought of time.
Who’s he? A boy wrapped in jamboree dress,
Or a child, a letter, a sudden love, a glowing star,
Honey-hued conversations, or some innocent eyes?
When he sat beside the canal, green shrubbery
Was sepulchral in his eyes, as he knew—indeed,
It was the last time he would drive to that house.
Who’s he? A manqué, an intellectual boy with hope,
Suffused with tears of struggle, every day, every night.
One day, he saw someone, and with tenderness,
A weird afterimage dispersed into his eyes, like those
Patients before being etherized upon the table, unconscious.¹
He returned to that house for the last time.
A sudden vibration of sweet voices rang outside;
He tried to dive into every melody like a patient lover,
But the melodies came to him in the happiest form.
He talked for hours, for hours that felt like eternity—
A few were of dreams, absurd, ludicrous, bizarre,
Yet he listened—indeed, he listened with care.
Nobody had listened to the melodies before, and
If you ignore their tunefulness, even in your own house,
Saying: “so childish, study,” along with a few fatherly dialogues,
The melodies will fade and dim in obsidian dark.
How snakes loved trees, and how a song played
A role in the development of life; how some teachers
Are, and how on a certain scary night, you dream
Of a silly incident—all are equally imperative.
So, he looked and observed with soft tenderness,
And the time had come: a few plates of bones left,
With one simple wave of a hand, so ethereal,
So vibrant, so alluring—he left with the remnants.
How would he live—dear readers—how would he live?
The melodies were stitched into the vacuum of his mind,
Like those torn, worn-out dresses his mother used to stitch
With a needle and feather-like thread to hold the buttons.
He lived in trepidation under the serene morning sky,
Under the warm breezes in the bloody afternoon,
Under the dusk of his echoing melodies, fading with him,
Under the sleepless nights in drenched thoughts.
What exactly happened to him, he didn’t know either,
He knew those melodies would ripen—he knew
How beautiful those melodies were, and if someone would
At least listen, there would be a chance to lose them.
So, he thought he would go again—to that house,
He knew this time he would listen with meticulous
Attention, and if possible, he would show his deluge;
He reached it with a strident euphoria in his mind,
Until a wave of hands, saying, “Hello,” in a soothing
Voice increased his heartbeat in the most surreal
Way, and he was awestruck, and he was discombobulated.
He didn’t continue the melodious conversation,
As he was intimidated, he was afraid, he was scared.
Four days passed, and he endeavored to listen to the melodies,
The more he listened, the stronger and stranger
The melodies became.² With a face filled with tears,
He waited for the last day, with only a few seconds
Of eye-contact and thoughts of timelessness,
The smile, how it was melded with the melodies,
The smile had every reason to melt him—as he counted,
He counted: seven seconds, it was seven seconds.
On the jamboree night, where the people, the relatives,
The beautiful children, the elders—all were whirling
Before his eyes except the melodies, and the more
He tried to grasp their doting beauty, the more
Antique myths of melancholy disintegrated him.
He noticed how sweetly the melodies came on the last day,
It was the last day—and how he glanced at those melodies,
These melodies, in the greatest coy, or in the greatest choice,
Ignored the sweet heart in the most detestable way.
O how! Yet he tried to listen, venturing to the first floor,
O how! Yet he tried to listen, venturing to the second floor,
O how! Yet he tried to listen, venturing to the third floor,
The more he chased them—the more those melodies
Flew like a gossamer thread, and in sorrow embedded,
In thoughts of futile hope, he had a terrible dinner.
The jamboree night was filled with people,
Eating in tremendous satisfaction, yet he had
A dinner of rejected melodies, and he wasn’t hungry,
Somewhere, Glaucus, heartbroken, was chasing Scylla,³
He chased the tunes in a fondling love,
Yet, it ran away with unrequited melodies.
The stars were twinkling, but the road was dark,
At last, somewhere, those twinkling stars led him home.
Months have passed; he replayed those memories.
He knew the paragon of his life couldn’t support
The privileged melodies, the affluent melodies,
The rich melodies, yet, in darkness, in sadness,
He knows how to love the melodies from afar. But the question
Remains: how long can he keep those fragments?
He replied boldly: “Five years, six years, I don’t know.”
In five years, the melodies will be mellowed,
Matured, and mixed with some other melodies;
Or the melodies will ask him, or he will ask the melodies
To reunite in the house again—and there’s no chance,
He knows, he knows. But how long will he live?
Or how long will those melodies survive? Nonetheless,
He loved the melodies more than the artificial shrubbery.
Under the canal water, under the jamboree night,
What should he do—dear readers—what should he do?
He can’t call it an adoration; what will happen?
He said, “I will write again after five years”—he must.
