:
1.
From the window
I watch the vine of giloy
climbing the castor tree.
On one of its branches
a cuckoo keeps calling—
singing a soft song
in her own language.
From those notes
rise the seven tones of music,
like the intoxicating breath
of a bamboo flute.
A voice steady and sweet
like your gentle words,
dissolving in the heart
like sugar drops melting
in the quiet emptiness of life.
When that forest-lover speaks,
the king of seasons begins to arrive.
Her kuhu-kuhu
makes the mango blossoms delirious,
her chirping
brightens the melancholy gardens.
You may not be as dark as she,
yet dusky and graceful like her—
and her voice
pulls me toward you
every single time,
like that slanting smile of yours
between rows of white teeth
bright as bottle-gourd flowers.
2.
On the edge of the riverbank
on a thick-leaved branch
of the cluster fig tree,
the cuckoo keeps calling.
Who knows what she sings—
the urgency of love
or the pain of separation.
You too go there sometimes
to gather dry fuel cakes,
to plaster cow-dung
near the old village well.
What do you speak about with her?
Perhaps she complains
about the crows’ harassment,
and you—
perhaps you pour out
basketfuls of reproaches
about my unfaithfulness.
Maybe the sorrowful cuckoo says:
the dense orchards are gone now.
No one marks her call anymore
as the beginning of the wedding season.
Her sweetness no longer fills
the juicy sugarcane stalks
with nectar-like sap.
Listening closely to her grief,
you must finally whisper
your own story—
that love no longer lives
with the same tenderness
as it once did
when we met
in our youth,
under the deep shade of that neem tree
where you kept calling
like a cuckoo for so long.
3.
Around me
on the ruins of broken houses
the cuckoo keeps singing—
her ancient melody
echoing through the years.
Those people never returned
who left the village
for the glittering cities.
In those abandoned homes
cats and mongooses
have made their dwellings.
On the chilbil tree growing there
every evening
crows gather in harsh assembly.
Flocks of lapwings
crying tee-tee
only deepen the endless silence
spread across the place.
The cuckoo’s call—
koo… koo…—
reminds me
of another time,
when these villages
laughed like wildflowers
in bloom.
Now they slowly fade
into emptiness.
