‘I am a house of wounds / All my rooms are filled with blood’: Poems recalling the horrors of war

Lal Ded Speaks Against Borders

Last night I saw a chinar tree
scream and run.
Its leaves and boughs were trembling;
its roots oozed blood.
It was afraid to look back.
The sky had drowned in the Dal lake;
it was now a river of fire.

A terrible beast with an alligator’s body
and a thousand dragon-faces
emerged from the sparkling lake.
Its eyes sent forth lightning.
Dead infants dangled from its
ten thousand claws.
Wherever the venom
from its forked tongue fell,
brothers began to fight one another
and the saffron and sandalwood tres
withered in the wink of an eye.
The dust-sorm its breath roused
put out the sun and led women astray.
The little boats once filled with lotuses
Now carried the unclaimed dead.
It rained bones.

Siva danced in the lifeless snow
piled up on the ruins.
His drum woke me up.

I sit alone, desolate, my throat
blue with the poison I drank.
Where are those deodar trees
that blossomed all over
the moment I asked them about Shiva?

Saints of the valley, when did
our words ooze away from hearts
like water from unbaked pitchers?

Springs and stars will not talk
to those who believe in borders.
I don’t believe in borders:
Do the grains of sand know
the name of the land where they lie?
The roots of apple trees
reach for one another
under the walls built by man.
Wind, water and roots
work against walls.
Birds snap borderlines
with their sharp wings.
The lines on the map
do not stop even a dry leaf.

Let us be rivers.

I journeyed from earth
to heaven and hell;
I sought no word’s permission.
The flesh remained here;
the soul rode the rainbow.
At times it saw an eagle
torn into halves;
clouds growing horns at times.
Saw Pandavas’ mother gather
firewood in the forest,
Krishna reaching Kalindi
on the back of a mule,...

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