My Friend

This poem was written one evening a year ago. I posted it on Facebook on November 21, 2011. After unsuccessfully attempting to publish it, I've decided to post it on my blog: Dilip

my friend

my friend was mad once

and he said what have they done

to my painting, this

is not mine anymore, why

do you want to poison me and my painting

you will murder me, I know

where is the night, I want to sit by the shore

eat one last meal, and walk into the sea

then when he was no longer mad

he told me it’s not pretty,

whatever you think about mad reason and sane madness

whenever you speak heroically of insane poets

holding aloft tattered flags of rebellion

when you celebrate the gutter in which

we lunatics find ourselves

remember this, the howling silence

the shadow at full noon

the stalker in an old friend’s eye

the knife in the kitchen

the stone in the head

the abyss of sleep

the bend in the road

the question inside, always breaking into

shattered glass, a mirror melting

as you look

walking backward in a tunnel with no end

remember me then

it’s not pretty

where is the night, I know

it travels with the day

as I walk out of a tunnel, backwards

and see beauty in the lines I drew in the starlight, standing on your terrace

in a black blanket one cold winter,

with no meaning to inhale

from my stalking shadows, no

grandeur sensed

from the hole in which you stood

sinking, and smiling and speaking of your heroic insane poets

we were there once, together, you and I

neither more mad than the time that made us so

neither less capable of speech or sight

and yet you stood in the marsh without sinking

where are you now,

has the mire taken your soul?

that you should mistake my shattered mirror

to be a clean slate

for our hopeless dreams?

wake up my friend,

embrace time’s light, you have it

we have it, you and I

in us, to see a painting appear the same

or even different, but with the same eyes in our skulls

to wash our faces in the fragrance

of every new day

to take the bend in the road and yet walk

without lament

for the shrivelling season we left behind

take my heart in your hands, hold it

whilst you may

for this much else will have ended

for us to remain friends, laughing as we did then

enjoying the glint of recognition as we did

that no-one understood, the poor things

when we were maddened

not by heroic poetry nor the moustaches of greatness

but by life and laughter,

dreams of soft arms and warm lips

and absurd things

take my hand, my friend

upon your heart, speak to me again

of colour and light

despite the shadows,

speak of love

after the truth-shower

speak of life, blissful union

after broken bodies

share sweet strains of music, kiss my cheeks, there’s still time

so said my friend who went mad once,

taking me with him into a tunnel, backwards

holding my hand as I lost my mind

and spoke of insane poets in a long lost future

so said he

***********

I know no melancholy 

but that of friends 

gone mad and I. 

-R Ray

***********

In Naxalbari, 48 years later
Remembering Rabindra