Am standing in a middle of
Waterless river…
… Unanswered!!
Some stones smiled at me…
Consuming vain struggles of dying fishes.
Sky, turned his back towards me,
Ignoring me… torturing me…
And suddenly I start running…
Afraid… what if trees would ask me… “why?”
I close my eyes, remembering old moments…
… Of purity… of water… of river.
And I clench tight my fist…
Trying to capture them forever.
But I’m unsuccessful,
And a tear falls down…
I stand there…
Amazed how the river ‘Dewatered’ again…
… Unanswered!!

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Tennyson – 1850

સવારે
ફલાવર વાઝમાં
મલપતાં ફુલો જોઇને ઉત્સાહમાં
મેં
બારીના પડદા ખોલ્યો તો –
ડાળે કાંટાને વળગી એક પંતગિયું
ધ્રુસકે ધ્રુસકે રડતું હતું.

-પ્રીતમ લાખાણી
Translation:

In morning,

I saw smiling and grooming flowers in the vase,

and I opened the curtains of my window with happiness.

And then I saw a butterfly,

crying with grief, holding the abandoned thorned branch.

I appear at sunrise to circumscribe the day.
Not an irrelevant shadow as some might say.
My point is validation of the kingdom beneath the ray.
The prince in deed of Vacua Spectra a “vast stygian ocean”
as Archimedes my gnomon would say.
When at night on my coming forth by day,
I am released from this tool where I lay.
The gnomons watch is ponderous,
his disk I tooth when I am transformed.
My work is endless though not laborious,
and to my kingdom I have sworn, to keep time infinite,
whether in the heaven the stars adorn,
or upon your wrist where I am worn.

If you found that you were me
You’d be undoubtedly confused.
And You wouldn’t know how to row
Against the currents that you know.
You’d want to write a book
And pen a witty tome
Or maybe be a crook
And steal an island home.
But every time your eyes
Fall on the thing you prize
A whiff of something new
Lights another fire in you.
Does all this chaos worry you?
Or does the upheaval excite you?
Would you rather stand this storm?
Or have it be the norm?
Either way its fine
Cause it’s not you;
It’s me.