BRAHMARAKSHAS

(Translated from Hindi by Nikhil Govind)

On that side of the city near the ruins

an abandoned, empty well
and within, in cold darkness
in waters deep within
amid deep-sunken stairs
in the old stale puddle..
I cannot follow these seeming foundations
these depths

encircling that well, entangled

silently stood the fig trees
in them hang the abandoned owl-nests,
brown, round

the smells of a hundred past pieties

green, jungly, raw
SWim in the air and become the weighted doubt
of some unknown quality
that unsettles the heart

on the railings of the well, beguiling, green

elbows resting
leans the white flowered tagar tree

Source: http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/poetry/brahmarakshas-m.php.
dee also http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/gajanan_madhav_muktibodh.php.
52 G. M. MUKTIBODH

and nearby,
a flashing red flowered cluster
my kanher
calling me to that edge of danger
well
where the black mouth of the
emptiness
glances upward toward the sky's
thick darkness
in the emptiness of the well's
sits the gatekeeper Brahmarakshas
after echo
and from within rises echo
like the mutterings of the insane
speculations,
defilement.

to wash away, at every moment

the shadow of impurity-

day and night, make clean-

to
Brahmarakshas, scouring his body
with the claws of his hand, again
and again hands chest mouth

still it stays...
still it stays

and.. . from his lips

strange strotras, mantras

fevered curses in chaste sanskrit,

lines on the forehead weave
glistening strands of thought
in a continuous stream's maddening flow
life's sympathy blots

but when, in the well's deep inner wall

oblique sun-rays fall and
motes rise,
light surfaces
he thinks the sun has bowed and saluted him.
when a moonbeam forgets its way
and its rays stagger off the walls
 BRAHMARAKSHAS | 53

he thinks it worships him as the

venerable knower.

body and mind pierced, yet

he rejoices, feeling the sky
too has humbly accepted him.
and with a twofold, frightening potency
his understanding mind ranges
through the folk-tales of Sumer-Babylonia, mellifluent Vedic hymns
today's chands, mantras, theorems, theories
of Marx Engels Russel Toynbee Heidegger Spengler Sartre even Gandhi
everyone's proof commented on afresh
all this as he bathes in the well's dense greenness.

this thundering, echoing, moving

. . .

darkness-bringing up phonemes
obscure words revolving anew
each word dividing its resonance
each form battling its reflection
maimed
becoming
the echo that wars with its echo

upon the well's rails

beguiling green elbows rest, and the
white tagar flowers listen
-to these echoes
the delicate fruits of the gooseberry tree
listen, the ancient fig
listens, I too listen to the tragedy that drifts
in this mad allegory
barred within this old well.

XXX

very high a dark savorous stairway

54 G. M. MUKTIBODH

its ill-lit step. ..

they of a strange interior universe.
a stepping-up and a falling;
again, a stepping-up and a-slipping,
with twisted feet
and on its chest many sores.
mere fierce than when good and evil
meet
calamity between good and a greater good

small fortune,
more likely misfortune!!

. . . an exorbitant fullness'
anguish is dear. . .

geometry's eye constructs

a moral investiture

self-consciousness's subtle moral recollection-

. . when has it been easy

to placate an exorbitant completeness

all explanation is precious!!

the sun comes out

anxiety's red haemorrhaging-river
flows into the day;
the rising moon
on the wound

dazzling white bandages on

its disarrayed forehead.
stars scatter the sky's edge
from uncountable decimals
come decimal-drops on all sides:
 BRAHMARAKSHAS | 55

in the transposed spreading field

beaten, he comes to use,
and lies spread. . .

chest and arms open extended,

a purifier.

his person a tender quartz, temple-like,

in that temple a stairway

it is hard to climb
the lonely stair.
with emotion with thought
the coordinated formed matter
the stair of assimilated arithmetic
i left for him.
that thought-emotion, that work coordinated and formed
in research
amidst all pandits, all thinkers he
in search of a guru
drifts!

but the age turned and he came trading fame

.. . his only wealth from work now,
from that wealth a heart & mind,
and, subject to wealth, from within
truth's glint
ever smolders.

self-consciousness and yet in this

love's discord.
a world consciousness unmade!!
at greatness' feet
an agitated dejected mind!
ifonly i had met him those days
then living his anguish myself
would have told him his worth
56 G. M. MUKTIBODH

his greatness!
of his, and his greatness,
use to people like us
i would have spoken of that inward greatness!

powdered within
and outside between two stone slabs
this is a farcical tragedy!

in the well himself

endlessly inside the mad symbols
how he within the dark room
kept at his arithmetic
and died. ..
in dense barbed undergrowth
in a dark cavity
dead bird like
departed
that flame unknown slept forever
this happened: why!
why did this happen!!
Brahmarakshas' breast-fed student
i wished to be
so

whose incomplete works

whose pain's source
collected, extracted, risen
I could bring.