The Sorrow of Understanding

 How clouds become rain
and fall in a thousand drops......
Why won't you fall
in just a few?


If you hadn't wanted,
I wouldn't have gotten wet at all!
This happiness of touching you—
that too could have stayed distant!


By the window, touching the far side of dim glass
I would have taken you into this heart,
fulfilled hopes through feeling alone,
keeping you just as you are.


Perhaps in the corner of your eyes—
a glass world!
To me—only emptiness!


I used to think,
whoever the heart touches day and night,
surely they can sense it!
Whoever this feeling binds,
surely they can bind back!
When I babble on, forgetting the hour,
surely they can hear something!
The food I cook thinking of them,
surely they taste its flavor too!
Night after night passes.......sleep won't come,
surely they too lie wounded by darkness, thinking of me!
When I move my umbrella aside and let my feet touch wet streets,
surely they too call to the sky with rain-filled eyes!
When I try to laugh at a comedy,
surely their cheeks dimple too!
When I get annoyed at half a poem in mid-afternoon,
surely they soak up sunshine in the other half!
When I'm sick in a dark room,
they whisper tenderly, weaving stories!
How much would come to mind!


When days end in hurt, when thousands of words turn to stone
in the chest, surely they'll smile sweetly and say, what are you hiding?
This fool! No use! When I babble like a stone—don't you know that?
When these eyes command the ocean, when the stubborn girl hides
in her wayward mother's senseless defiance, surely they'll rise close to their chest,
breathing together, saying, here I am.........so very close!
What's happening? Are you crazy! Will you sell tissue packets, leaving everything behind?
In that dim restaurant, when I'm drowning in the leisurely trap of soft music,
absorbed in the menu, suddenly they'll come sit beside me, laughing,
shall we have some toffee? With garlic-fried crab cakes? Soup? Thai? Tom yum?
When I lose my way and step onto evening streets, let them take my hand and say, how far can the path be!
Feet hurting? Should I put my hands under your feet? Close your eyes and find me,
see how I'm walking with you wrapped in my arms! What a person! Why so shy!
The invisible one—they merge into the heart's sheath, among a hundred discordant tasks, in unknown feelings, familiar debts!


If feeling and love were truly real, surely they'd understand everything!
I was perfectly content thinking this! When I found you,
I realized life was passing in miscalculation!
What I think, what I understand,
you think, you understand.........
Only then—in this feeling, as much as you are,
in that feeling, I am just as much!
You bind, I bind—in loving and being loved,
you exist in this heart, I exist in that heart—in less or in more!


I know you love me!
I understand you love me!
—these two are not the same,
both live in mouth and chest,
both speak in eyes and lips,
you and I become two!