Baldness

1

The baldhead and the baldhead have
little to hide from each other.
They can easily reflect the past and the present 
in a glossy smile
But today the poet hides a something from the poet,
the traveller from the traveller,
the neighbour from the neighbour.
And India hides everything from China.
The unpopular idol of Harishchandra in Ajanta
blinds itself with the present
at midnight.
Everyone hides the trump-card,
everyone carries a knife, a tusk.



2

The baldhead and the baldhead have 
little to hide from each other.
But today when they meet in the theatre or the library
they close half their eyes and ears,
and half-tongued, ask:
“O friend, when did you grow so bald?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Nor I.”
The Law finds it hereditary,
obviously the impudent bequest of an unwary father
or grandfather;
withered are the glories and the longings;
severed are the moorings;
withered, too, the crown, the horn, the feather, the flower.

In the town hall the philosopher discoursed:
This is the hood of Nothingness,
the Absolute of birth and death,
this Kafka, Camus, the Rock, the Wasteland, the cracked sky,
Godot who never turns up,
Genet’s dark whistling,
The Eternal Silence beyond the modulations of the Essence…
The crow on the twig of the tree
Night on the twig of the day
Lonely island on the twig of the sea
Look.
The philosopher has hidden something
Something he fears or hates.
The Ganges soars down from the sky
But the Siva waiting below is bald.


3

Brother,
a crocodile preys on our brains
and has us for sustenance
Brother,
cowardice never forbids a dog to bark.
A dog’s vision is never veiled:
“Here is the thief, here the guest,
here the postman, and here death.”

One suffering no God on his back.
My friends,
These our mansions hold us rotting,
leaving the truth unsaid,
with not even a tail to inherit,
with not even a hell to deliver us.
We are not even dogs, brother;
From our ceiling doves leave for trees,
rats for burrows, cats for mysteries.

Farewell, farewell, to the local Helens,
the seductive landscapes, the flinting gossips
                               by the village wells.
Farewell to the pompous lords in the secure mansions…

A volcano opens its eyes,
somewhere in this expanse of silence.


4

My friend,
Not the brideless return of the groom 
nor the shadeless sterile wall of the prison 
                          that chains the liberators
nor the dawnless roof of the gallows,
nor the charred floor of the burnt-out home,
nor the arid anticipation of the skull that waits to explode.
See, the beautiful people and the dandies
roaming the streets of this holy land are all baldheads,
these fire-spitting eyes and brows.
Don’t you see the second head within the head?

BALDNESS