Poem 42
As the last stanza suggests, this is a very cool poem! Those two complete sentences in the first stanza make things calm and reflective.
Love is, at first, a setting out on a high adventure.
Then the troubles begin – and one is a little less sure.
The lover finds himself with one foot in that world and one foot in this:
The clatter of little greeds in his ears and on his lips Love’s first kiss.
That ‘clatter’ doesn’t give the romantic quester much dignity! And it gets worse –
So he is forced to dissemble and appear a little absurd,
And yabber their tongue while preserving in his heart his hint of the Word.
Now for a novel twist. This is not a quest to kill the dragon!
Have courage young lovers, and push on regardless to the point of no-returning
And challenge the Dragon-beloved: the world, anyway, will soon now be burning.
It is the world and not the dragon that will be burning!
We have already been ages on the road to the Beloved’s door:
Let us not be disheartened by the prospect of a few miles more.
This is already an epic struggle,
Pity the delicate discriminators of private encounters:
Neither the world nor the beloved will endure pretending renouncers.
So much modern verse is of this type of delicate discrimination, nursing private sensibilities of individual ego.
The Beloved is a dragon – but his nostrils pour out a cooling stream
To the lovers who beg respite from the heat of their personal dream.
Cool indeed; but not to forget that though this dragon can relieve us of the frets and fevers of the world –He will slay us! But as Eruch Jessawala said, the Avatar “goes into the fire of illusion bare handed”. (Mehera-Meher, III, 542)