Poem: Two prayers… Or are they one?

PRAYER – I

Softly, softly

He enters my heart

Wearing masks I can never recognize.

In my innermost recesses,

He cuts me, leaves me bleeding.

Gently, gently

He wounds me,

And in my bleeding, he rejoices.

Mere mehboob, mere dost

My beloved, my friend…

Silently he sits with me

And shares my sorrow, my grief

And through his own tears, smiles.

His smile makes me forget my tears.

He laughs with me,

He laughs at me,

Sometimes the distinction blurs

And frankly, I don’t care.

I gaze at his radiant face

And pray that he never stops laughing.

(If he does, I shall gladly play the fool

Let him laugh at me.)

But I see him raise his hands

To secretly wipe his eyes.

And I seize his hands

Because his salty tears are mine

Mine by right to kiss away and to drink.

PRAYER – II

Mere mehboob, mere dost, mere aaka

You struggle to express your love

And then you struggle to conceal it.

I have felt your wounding touch.

My beloved, my friend, my master

You invite me to bleed for you.

I am honoured

And I accept.

Freely I shall bleed and rejoice.

Come, slash me

With the barbs of your world.

Tear me open,

I shall not resist.

I can hear the sharp dying cry

Of every bird and beast on earth.

Then let their dying breath

Be in my throat.

With the pain of their dying, inflict me.

I can hear the groans of the trees that fall

To the heavy thudding axe

And the shrill milling saws.

Each piece of wood, each shred of paper

That surrounds me, whispers,

“Like you, my friend, we too stood tall.

We once stood in the sunlight

And breathed the same air that you breathe.

And we embraced the good earth with our last gasp.”

Then let each blow that ever felled a tree

Be on my thighs.

Let the saw mills slice my bones into thin strips.

And let my flowing blood

Lubricate and cool the jagged steel.

My father,

I sense the wrath

That you are holding back.

Yes, I am responsible for every act

Of my billion ancestors,

billion contemporaries

And billion descendants.

I am they.

With the full force of your suppressed wrath,

My father,

Smite me.

For I am indeed they.

By the very fact of my being human,

I daily plunder and rape the earth.

My beloved, my master,

Artfully concealed by the sound of your laughter,

By the noise and bustle of life,

You suffer countless deaths

Within the space of a single indrawn breath.

You wince, my friend, and laugh to hide it.

Each mother’s birth pangs you feel in your loins

And the struggle of each child — man and beast –

To stay alive for another hour, another day.

Yea, and then their death-rattle

As each life winds down in the end.

Fill my prayer cup with your tears, my friend

And I shall drink it to the last drop.

I ask for no favours, no mercies

But your tears are my rightful due.