The World and Its Silent Anguish: Four Poems by Meenakshi Jauhari
‘It has all been done – she has aged, and arrived, / and, one day, will leave. / Her day passes, and leaves behind no residue. / Her night weaves a starry reality she remembers briefly, for a few / waking moments. Then it too evaporates, leaving no trace.’
Autumn of this world
I tell autumn: your colors are flushed, face
weathered
but what do you know of living in this world,
filled with shades of hate, flushed
with rage –
at nothing, or sometimes just little things.
I tell autumn: your hues overflow the heavens,
and light up this world, a surreal haze.
But do you stop and ask,
where are the dreamy lovers, the shady lingerers,
the vacant-eyed grandmothers watching
over grandkids in swings in the darkening park,
who will pay homage to you this evening,
and who will feed you the seeds of spring?
*
Woman ageing
And now, her dreams have walked out
into her world and she lives them fully.
Reality no longer interferes.
And her living dreams don’t melt away
in the rude morning light.
She knows her mother is far away
but what does it matter?
Her mother sleeps beside her every night.
Watching her daughter prepare for dinner in the kitchen –
Chop-chop of the knife, tinkling of cutlery and plates,
she recalls a face, and talks of a son she never had.
She smiles, these cool late-autumn evenings have a perfume.
Soon winter will unfold, and the chilly evening air
will be unbearable. She’ll remain in her room.
Her days are small, basic. Her life is humble.
No more accumulating, accounting. No more ageing, arriving, leaving.
It has all been done – she has aged, and arrived,
and, one day, will leave.
Her day passes, and leaves behind no residue.
Her night weaves a starry reality she remembers briefly, for a few
waking moments. Then it too evaporates, leaving no trace.
Life has whittled down to a set of habits,
acts of submission sometimes,
sometimes, sparks of defiance.
A few word-bridges broken by vistas of silences.
The wrinkles on her face gleam in the gold of
the evening light, visible –
who knows what wrinkles frame
her forgetting-remembering mind.
*
Between my birthday and yours…
…summer turns to fall,
and the trees go dark in the rust and gold wind,
brown-red kohl burning and smudging
their eyes.
If I don’t worry about you, about us,
and so many things besides,
how will trees keep faith in men
and men have faith in angel-birds doing tawaf,
or the ocean’s ardor rising as
the sky bends low for a kiss at the edge
how will the seasons trust the earth’s call?
how will the huma fly?
…
I was the breath in the trees, and the night
that wrapped the other side –
One day, I was the trembling
heartbeat of the deer in flight –
I wept in the tortured grasses when the
fire blew that summer, the fish that
washed in when the tide rode high.
I was the child that starved,
and his heartbroken
mother who couldn’t cry.
All of the world, and its silent anguish,
was none other than I
*
Whispers of the earth
Sagas of lives unfold on the edges of the rolling seas
Little men laugh and sorrow, lofty empires crumble and die
Today’s invisibles shall stand in the light on Judgement Day
Their brave little acts of living, never letting hope die
I want to write a sad song today and sing it to the winds
They’ll memorize it and sweep my grave with it after I die
Birds of summer remind me with their morning song
Honour the passing seasons generously, they all die
I fell in love, then love chiseled me, and I became a rubai
On moonlit nights, I now soar to the stars, thus will I die
I ask the palash: what shapes our world – love, sorrows, fears?
What carries us on our way, what makes hearts stop and die?
I try to live my days in the fullness of faith
At night, the earth whispers how the hope-deniers die.
***
Meenakshi Jauhari has been writing and translating for several years. Her poetry volume, The Fish Who Flew, came out in 2019. In 2024, her translation of Farhatullah Baig's famous Urdu work on Delhi came out as Delhi's Last Mushaira in 1845. Her original stories, translations and essays have featured in literary journals such as Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), The Little Magazine, Out of Print, IIC Quarterly, Gulmohur Quarterly, and others. She is currently working on translating a children's book in Urdu to English. You can find her on Twitter: @meenakshijc and Bluesky: @meenakshijc.bsky.social.
