At Times

At times, reading one of my own lines,
I wonder:
am I really its maker,
or did someone else write it before me
and I’m merely echoing?

Within whose head am I the dream?
Under whose direction am I the actress?
Who is it that makes me write
line after line
by means of invisible signals?

We poets live in one another –
interpenetrated –
this one’s line in that one’s head,
that one’s rhythm in this one’s ear,
this one’s wire in that one’s wire
in a complicated cross-connection,

this one not getting that one,
that one loving this one,
this one’s lips on that one’s glass,
that one’s woman in this one’s man:

tangled and twined
in an electrical circuit
or a collective intercourse:
it is difficult to separate us.

Just as, whether we like it or not,
the atoms and molecules
of Shakespeare, Rabindranath,
Tamerlane, Hitler and all
are mixed up within us,

in the same way – look! – water
merges with water, the ocean of sounds takes
your words, my words,
your poems, my poems,
our loves.


Written in the eighties in Kidlington. The poem was published in a magazine, but I am not sure when. It is in the collection Kotha Boltey Dao (1993). Translated by the author. This translation was published in Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series, No. 17, published by King’s College London, University of London, 2001.