I Wanted to Be

I wanted to become the ink in Rabindranath's pen. I wished to wander word by word, in poetry's rhythms and counter-rhythms, or through the layers and depths of stories.

I wanted to become a large black piano, coming alive each evening—sometimes in sorrow, sometimes in joy.

Sometimes I would sing songs of fire in melancholy tunes, or frost-cold verses, sometimes I would keep time joyfully to intoxicated love.

I wanted to be a pair of exuberant anklets, dancing on life's stage in rapture or in gloom.

I wanted to be a weaver bird, building my nest high on some treetop, swaying down to my beloved's shoulder whenever the wind blew. Beating my wings, I would fly from one end of the earth to the other—from Siberia to China, Japan, or North Africa.

I simply didn't want to be human. An ant doesn't have to live bearing all the burdens that humans must fulfill until death.

Yet see—what I never wanted to be, that's what I became; I could become nothing but a human being. I carry this life's burden on my shoulders forever, just as an ant carries a load ten times its own weight.

Sometimes I think I'm probably an ant in human form.