TEARS
Dr. G. SRIRAMAMURTY
[Translated from the original in Telugu]
“Tears, tears, tell me your bygone story.”
“Ask our parents, they know It all.”
“Eyes, eyes, begetters of terms
Give me the story.”
“Ask the master–he knows it all.”
“Master, master, lord of
tears,
Let me have the story.”
“Story of tears?” queried the master.
“Only the heart knows how the sensory gadget functions
At the slightest touch of a delicate breeze.”
Asked how it functions, the heart broke:
Hark, sir,
This dripping tear at the edge of the eye
Is indeed a satadru forking
into a hundred streams”.1
It’s a salty sensation cozing slow
When and wherefore of which we do not know.
Presently it gushes forth, a tidal wave of brine.
Its mute eloquence joins heart to heart
Drenching them each with pity.
How many centuries of wonderful stories
Like those of the ‘seven-fold hundred’ of Hala’s
description. 2
Flank its banks of salt:
How many nababs, 3
how man, garibs4
How many love-lorn lovers and god-mad
devotees
How many sick
How man, poor
How many lowly without a wink of sleep
How many shreds of colourful dreams
Drifting on its tide of brine.
What secret abysmal chasm under this oceanic tide of tears?
Who can read the mystery in the salty tracks on the
cheek of a babe sitting all of a sudden
bolt upright in its hammock weeping its midnight
tears?
Who can unfreeze the secret frozen in the tears of a
dying man who tries in vain to spell it out?
Who can unravel the mystery of the whining tears
in the eyes of the eyeless broken?
Who can unfold the glory of the transluscent tears
shot with the gleaming beams of uproarious
laughter?
Who can divine the mystery of the drop on the cheek of the sky?
Who can unknot the maternal heart of the black
tears
of the dark eyes of a cow?
O! Who, again, can tell why a bird sheds its soft, silent
tears?
Who can solve the secret of a shining nascent pearl
between the eyes of a Yogi in his transcendent
meditation?
Who can, O tell me, who can?
Here on this way every inch is strewn with heads
weighted with sorrowful tears.
Here on this side every inch you find warm
collyrium black pools of tears.
Hark, sir,
The tear is the quintessential sublimated juicy
flavour of infinite variegated world of
psychic
emotions
Wonderful in its form of cosmic magnitude
If it is wet with pity, milk of human kindness
sprouts in the heart,
If it is ebulient
It revolts like consuming fire uncontrolled
Yes, it is so:
The world’s first poem is born in tears:
The poem of life, too, begins in tears.
At the root of every new creation are tears.
Notes:
1 The reference is
to the puranic story describing how the sage Vasishta once tried to commit suicide by jumping into a
branch of River Sindhu and how the river split into
hundred branches to save him out of pity. The river came to be known as Satadru since then.
2 The reference is
to Hala’s Gaathasaptashati
3 Nababs: The rich in general
4 Garibs: The poor