A Poem By Namdeo Dhasal

From Ya Sattet Jeev Ramat Nahi , 1995
(The Soul Doesn’t Find Peace in this Regime)

Autobiography

The face you find stirred up on the surface of water is mine:
The foaming crown on the raised wave
About to touch a pride poised between time and space.
Hell’s bastions of suffering have begun to crumble and fall.
I’ve made myself tired and unhappy here on this seashore of pain;
Sculpting with a chisel an image of many-faceted wounds.
The gossamer mantle of Being fluttering in the wind;
A fierce foreplay of light and dark creating its urgent rage
Formless skies; wistful; as the transparent birds of dreams fly away.
The flowers of inner awareness, beginning to bloom, have no fragrance;
Like a snake, I too shed my skin; this touch of icy water cuts all passion’s cords.
Don’t blow a soothing breath on the surface of water now, or my memoirs will lose their face.

[From Namdeo Dhasal:Poet of the Underworld, Poems 1972-2006, published by Navayana (navayana .org), 2007.]

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