Sarabjeet Garcha
Unlearning Kabir
The unseen singer
living in the heart sings
Keep listening to the song
Keep crushing grass
no matter what riverbank
you are at
There’s no room for anything
in the song but doom
The loom is lucid in its rattle
Just hold on to the chosen thread
to reach the source of the throb
that has robbed you of peace
This poet-weaver
perhaps armchair potter too
will never become obsolete
A clod of earth in his fingers
will always be an entrancing weapon
threatening to mash the mundane
with a decisiveness
impossible to undo
Aiming for your heart he will hurl
the maxim-hewn mudball at you
as your outstretched arm
flashes a denying palm
less of a shield
more of a shatterer
that multiplies the airborne blob
into a quick spatter of muck beads
adorning the face
Then it’s up to you
See if sifting through
the glossary of burial rites
you’re ready to be wooed
into giving up on
your accrued sum
of infinitesimals this easily
It’s not just the grit
in the words that’ll get you
but also the voice they wear
Mud is the only music spread
in the corpus of the weaver’s poetry,
each word reminding of
the mortal remains being daubed
into dirt even before the eyes
can let out their final squirt
to wash down what you took
for mere muck marks
Let the mudlark hiding in the heart
continue to turn the silt
that once was one
with the voice of the river
till your fingers glow
with permanent grains
promising the harvest of
private wisdom
Let closed eyes read what
you’ve never written
but what you know
is always lurking
in the dark interior
It is then that the ear
will get accustomed
to the repetitive counsel:
Make mud
Make it mud
Make it one with mud