by Max Babi
Member since:
May 4, 2006

A Corner Of Your Heart

January 08, 2007 06:59 AM EST (Updated: March 03, 2007 08:29 PM EST)
views: 46 | comments: 20

 

In a forgotten corner of your heart

that thrives wearing a sheet of fogginess, 

beyond the ambit of your sensibilities

a few tender shrubs long to grow to heights

so as to shield your wayward dreams-

and they keep pracitising this dark art...

 

Whenever your eyes fill up 

fogginess turns to clouds, clouds to lightening, 

lightening to rains, rains to floods 

-all this business starts from that corner.

(c) Max Babi 010807 

 

 Originally conceived in Urdu as:

Aap-ke dil mein ek kauna hai,
dhundhlahat-ki chadar audhkar panapta hai.
Us mein aap-ke ehsaas-ke daayre-se baahar,
kuchh kanvle-se paudhe shajar ban kar
aap-ke aavara sapno.n-ko chhanv dene-ki
fankaari-ka riyaaz karte rehte hai.n.

Jab kabhi aap-ki aankhe.n bhar aati hai.n
dhundhlahat-se baadal, baadal-se bijli,
bijli-se baarish, baarish-se sailab
-yeh sab karobaar us-hi kohne-se
shuru hotaa hai.

(c)Max Babi 021106.

 

 

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Comments: 20

~*Jackie Ferrari*~ Jan 8, 2007, 8:31am EST
ohh....sweet and sad at the same time.
John Doyle Jan 8, 2007, 8:48am EST
Excellent Max, as always
Alankrita P. Jan 8, 2007, 9:21am EST
How beautiful, intense and concise...
Vicky P. Jan 8, 2007, 10:34am EST
Moving piece.
gautami tripathy Jan 8, 2007, 1:11pm EST
" forgotten corner" indeed.
Shaunee C. Jan 8, 2007, 1:38pm EST
This is nice and very true.
Carol Roach Jan 8, 2007, 1:50pm EST
beautiful as usual, you are such a great artist
rashti j. Jan 9, 2007, 1:05am EST
Beautiful!!
Barin M. Jan 11, 2007, 12:03am EST
USI DHUNDHLEPAN SE SISKATI MOM KE UJALE KE AEK KATARE SE YE KAUN CHHOO RAHA HAI?

tHANKS mAX!
Ozymandias Zedevander Jan 13, 2007, 2:14am EST
your transcreation is fantastic as ever! And where you get hold of Urdu I don't know. I guess you spend your hours diving the depths of that ocean in search of pearls. And it gives you its bounty.
Max Babi Jan 13, 2007, 9:14am EST
Ozzie my boy,

The secret is agony that transcends ecstasy till both fuse into each other.
There is no greater trigger to heart-rending poetry than redhot pain.
Some day you will recall my words, and wonder.

Cheerz!
Stirling D. Jan 13, 2007, 12:25pm EST
Max, I need that secret. I've been trying like hell to get to that place in my work. With all the distractions of modern life, it's really hard to embrace the agony - keep the hand to the fire - long enough to get there. I really admire your tenacity. Thanks for the inspiration.

This is an amazing poem. It says it all.
Max Babi Jan 13, 2007, 12:49pm EST
Ozzie and Sterling dears, I have faced death upclose 44 times, and had accidents that kept me bedridden for months. My tolerance for physical pain is so high, some doctors dread treating me. Used to be shit-scared of emotional pain, but an avalanche after avalanche has made me cultivate a rhino skin. In a Russian film I saw an 85 year old grandma jump into a frozen lake thru a tiny opening and compete with adolescents to come first! Practice makes one perfect.

Sultan Mehmood Begda of Gujarat was mollycoddled shamelessly by his mom who didn't want him to die of poisoning like his father and three siblings did. She fed him one gram of poison daily till he became a powerful young man. It is said, no poison could kill him and once a cobra bit him, but it died.

See?

Cheerz!
Christie Frenchie Jan 14, 2007, 7:57am EST
Wow. You put into words what my soul knows/ feels but can't express. Thanks for sharing your soul with me.
Olumide Akinwumi-Oke Jan 26, 2007, 8:38am EST
The forgotten corners of our subconscious where the real man is found. God help us! Well done Max!
John F Walter Feb 8, 2007, 4:33am EST
Such a knowing shift from the fog where shrubs of memory grow to protect dreams of the past to the mechanism of tears manifesting as weather in the storm between a couple, an intimate and tender insight gained through years of observation in this vivid and immediate meditation of a speaker on his beloved.

This poem holds those tears--it suppresses them for the full effect that happens beyond the words--in a beautiful maneuver, ending instead with this powerfully conclusive statement: "all this business starts from that corner." That corner that is kept unconscious, in denial, confabulating a pipe dream instead of finding its way to this insight!

This poem is incredible in its revelatory impact, in what it is saying as a sad and futile remonstrance.

Hats off and handkerchief extended, my dear friend and fellow poet.
Amitabh Mitra Apr 3, 2007, 5:19pm EDT
Its only a corner, clouds hide it from time and the old sun. Somewhere, someone speaks in hushed whispers as a lightening fails again to imprison the sky.

Amitabh Mitra
Max Babi Apr 3, 2007, 10:15pm EDT
Thanks dear Dr. Mitra.
That's pithy and potent poem you wrote in response.
Muchos gracias, amigo!

Cheerz!

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