From the calendar of lived life, year twenty-one has fallen away today, I do not see you; on the wrong path, year twenty-two arrives! Those two eyes that wrote letters in secret, I no longer see them, can you tell how long it's been? Year twenty-one!
In the aging afternoons between classes, you never sang to me over two sips of tea! You never touched me with dewdrops gathered from kalki flowers in both hands! Never told me with eyes and lips in secret tryst, take my tenderness with you; for year twenty-one has passed! I never tucked starless fragments of love into your closed fist, how many millions of years have slipped by…
Will you laugh and say, it's only been twenty-one years! The golden mornings no longer ring in gentle tunes, so I've folded the sky and kept it in my breast pocket, today twenty-one years have passed! On the wet windowpane, doodles of your memory… as if life itself clings there, while on this side, the honeyed nights have dried up one by one, I turn to see, ah, how terrible! hanging by the wild nettle's edge; something beautiful died unnoticed.
When shiuli flowers adorned a young woman's hair, I wanted to die countless times! In search of an aesthetic death I wandered homeless from west to east… you think my beginning was in reverse melody! Yet, to you life meant returning in the sulk of a cloud-colored sari; Shiuli is now a flower of sorrow, falling in blue spring, so you too have trampled over twenty-one years!
You were saying, in the alleyways of fragmented urban life you are new, wandering the western borders, another you; that you is the eternal truth! How many can love an artificial human wrapped in humanity's guise, tell me, I could; because you were no longer bathed in the seventh moon's light! While I carved the moon's body with skillful hands.
This afternoon I called the sun and surrendered all rights; no debt, no claim, no expectation, no condition or complaint; I became nameless in your ledger at last, I who am worth three pennies, my twenty-one years passed in delusions of grandeur!
Here beside the burnt courtyard, in the wild grass, Kamaja wanders day and night seeking Urvashi's full moon; you would say, love is a word born of romance! Beyond touch, ethereal and dimensional, merely my imagination! Those who can never say, beloved, come let us be absorbed in the bridal chamber, tell me, have I joined their ranks! Yet I have learned, in Yaman raga life's meaning is wet anklets on paired feet at Jaleshwari; you were the chorus even in my ugliest poems! I learned that happiness is life's secret script, you just never said how much of a question mark I was in your pen, that formula! I'm a two-page man, yet with an irresistible desire to be a lover in cloud-spring! You said, keya flowers bring no intoxication! Only when I become a jasmine dripping in dew-bathed reckless madness will I suffice! Since then I've watched evening's death at Jaleshwari, twenty-one years have passed.
Across your map I've gathered the scattered words one by one, in naked summons the lover's kiss is rebellious today! You, you... let your time come, cast both eyes on detached beauty, I'll pour moonlight! In Urvashi's longing let all desires be free and wild; today let only love remain like clouds and earth. Can you tell why the evening star walks alone in the lonely cloud's heart?! I was saying, I'll cross Kirtinasha river, your accumulated sorrow will remain alone in my secluded corner.
Remember, this is not love, this is only the sound of the first vow breaking! You may not accept it, you don't have to accept everything, this is how each life burns away inevitably! Truth be told, I never walked that path; an entire lifetime of failed wandering!
Now you can be indifferent in the moon's cradle, for you and Kirtinasha are one! In the sunset nest, in evening's folds, my joyful breath touched by you speaks in deep voice, I love you! You said, don't keep it deep, beloved; let us rather float in moss-green... uncertain people mustn't go deep!
Suddenly one might say, listen, I'm going to the bridal chamber, farewell to you. Then, moonlight catches fire in moonlight, I burn unanswered, you don't see, no one sees!
Counting them out, twenty-one deaths found completion today, and I too am well!