(This is a translation of my Marathi poem)
Recently, I sent my poem “One tear” from 2015 with a new title called “Journey of my Sorrow”. Few friends asked me, “Hey, what happened?” Some others wanted to know what “journey of sorrow” means. A poem belongs to the reader, not to the poet. Reader owns the subtle, delicate waves created in his/her mind by reading such poems. Even then, let me try to answer the above questions in the briefest possible way.
Sorrow is one constant even in today’s high-speed new brave world flooded with social media. Such sorrow suddenly catches me unaware and unarmed, and freezes me in my groove. I had presented four shades of such sorrow in 2015. Sometimes such moments of sorrow are drenched, and I want to throw them away in a flowing river of life like a wasted flower after pooja. Sometimes that moment of sorrow is a weird stranger, sometimes lonely, and sometimes, it is like a detached fakir.
Today in 2022, the same random shades described in the poem in the past, appears to be my journey of sorrow. Am I becoming detached from my sorrow like a fakir, like Yogeshwar Lord Krishna playing on the banks of river Yamuna?
Journey of My Sorrow
One still moment
One stagnant tear
Drenched
Like a discarded dried flower in rain
One still moment
One stagnant tear
the stranger
Like a dark blue cloud on the horizon
One still moment
One stagnant tear
alone
Like infinite presence of north star in a dark night
One still moment
One stagnant tear
the Fakir
Like a floating Krishna in a flowing river
Unfathomable sorrow
And one companion tear!
Nitin Anturkar (June 20, 2015)
