A Turning Soon

The mountain tells me I am free. I hear it being said but it seems faded and untrue. The numbers just don�t add up, just aren�t fair. The closer and longer I look, the more it smarts, the larger the cheat!

Is this what my lips once quivered for? This the chain I turned my back on the world for?

This pain is not freedom.

The mountain tells me I am free
Every cell of me rises up, echoes, yes, yes,
In annoyance, in disagreement, in impatience, in hate.

I hear it sung, but it seems too painful, too difficult, and maybe too slow?

Life sings its own song, but my song is borrowed. The majesty of the snowy peaks belongs to all, but I belong only to the cold silence of the hilltop. Who will help me find the words to my song? Who cares a damn?

Waking up in the middle of the night, circles of vodka in my head and orange juice in my stomach, I rejoice in the absence of a memory, I am free, I am freed, I am freeing, letting go of the anchor, letting the wind take me, hearing the mountain but not what it says. I am free to be, to feel, to seek. I am free to turn towards or to turn away from, as I had always been. Who will help me find the words?

I hear it being said.

Yet all I know,
As I wall out gardens built,
Bury the swelling pain,
Take sides within myself,
As I see defeat in what feels like victory,
Is that the mountain is not wrong.

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Subhorup Dasgupta
Hyderabad
2007