This defined Love (of stories and tragic ends) La ILA Majnu
Romeo Juliet, Heer-Ranjha
is a kite
carved out of SKY
poured and pushed into frame-hearts of mortals
to pulsate with pulse
in a lover’s chest.
Lines of colour, of religion and all games earthly made-up
tether kites to the Montagues and the Capulets.
What’s in A. Name?
This defined Love, coursing in human veins
reels in sonnets of pain
seeking deedar on balconies and bazaars.
“Love comforteth like sunshine after
R
A
I
N”
This defined Love craves rihai…escape…
At last,
on a breezy seaside, or on Basant Panchami,
this fickle filament called Love
lifts rods of spar, spreader and spine
and soars and soars and sails— when the wind is right.
“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.”
This wind or is it the wailing sky? The riser rises to this call,
and edges forward —
flying flag-freedom of line laundry.
This bridle entwined of loops and loops of
web-entrapments of destinies
succcccummmbbs
and unravels to this call
of the wind, or is it the Sky demanding
his carved-out space
back
like dictators do, like colonists did.
There’s a war on every screen. So much innocence dead, dying, crying. Mute.
This defined Love
slices humanity into c o u n t r i es.
The kites
rise and swirl
And pull and yaw and yaw
to break free.
At last, the sails meet mid-air.
Their lines cross.
A KISS. Last entanglement.
No lines. No kites. No hearts, pleas, rivalries, vile histories.
Shreds. Paper. Fragments. Broken twigs
land in conquered shrieks in maidans, in gullies—unreachable chimneys.
this (un) defined Love (cut from ties and lines of destinies – doomed)
finally FILLS the empty.
“my bounty is as boundless as the Sea,
my LOVE as DEEP; the more i give to thee,
the more i have, for BOTH are INFINITE.”
(Notes:
*Deedar means view or sight in Urdu
**rihai means escape or freedom in Urdu
***Maidan and gullies mean fields and lanes in Hindi
The stories of India’s partition of 1947 as told to me by my grandmother and the current Israel, Palestinian conflict inform this poem.
This poem is inspired by the style of E.E. Cummings.
The quotes in italics are from various works of Shakespeare.