AT EVERY STEP

Author(s): Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Source: Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 10, No. 1, MISCELLANY (Fall 1974), pp. 42-
43
Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40871708
Accessed: 05-12-2019 15:40 UTC

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 - 42 -

AT EVERY STEP

Crossroads
arms outstretched
meet me

at every step
leap a hundred directions
I want to explore
their experiences and dreams
all seem real;
I want to go deeper
a restless curiosity within me
I don't know what I'll discover,

I imagine in every stone

a burning diamond,
in every breast an impatient soul,
the transparent river in gentle faces;
that each voice has an eplc-angst.
I wish to embark upon every journey
swim through every heart,
this is how I give myself away - fragment.
It's much too strange o
I keep wandering
am often deceived,
I delight in seeing
myself cheated r
Even in me
sits a happy fool
drunk upon sadness and mad laughter,
the world is its own nemesis o

These advancing crossroads

where I stand and gossip
take away my stories
give me others * » .
p o o I find a novel

tales of distress, grievances,

ego-analysis, yarns,
I listen to the spirited verses and psalms
of our times«

Poems make love

vie with one another,
are sacrificed upon the fire-steps
of living/dying.

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 - 43 -

When I return
carrying frightened symbols
or grinning images
metaphors meet me at the threshold
and say, "You have to live
another hundred years.11

Even at home
crossroads at every corner
a hundred directions with outstretched arms,
alleys, lanes, thoroughfares branching;
everyday I encounter
a hundred untravelled experiences
and I think
the writer's predicament
is not having too little
but too much to say,
his anxiety, the choice he must make.

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