Your coming and going

Your coming and going

Your coming and going,

Left a motionless pause.

Leaving one in solitude.

Of being and not being.

A silent melancholy,

In denial and hope.

But, time ticks on,

Not stopping by.

One mourns and celebrates,

The footprints thy left.

Appreciating the fullness,

Of that emptiness.

Your presence here,

Will forever be felt.

For the moments between,

Your coming and going.

[Note: This poem started with the loss of a friend in late May of 2014. Mihir, you will be remembered.  The void is permanent, but perhaps it is not; it is just a transient separation.What comes will go. But, that going also signifies a second coming. 

Going beyond, this poem is also about those recurring patterns that one observes in our everyday life. Or, even the ferocity of that sudden calamity that devours and destroys everything that comes its way, but ultimately fizzles out and returns everything to a serene calmness that is profound and sublime. This poem also draws inspiration from Octavio Paz’s 'Between going and staying'.]

Srijit Mishra

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Between going and staying

Between going and staying, the day is stuck,

a block of frozen transparency.

Everything is seen yet all is elusive:

the horizon untouchably near.

Papers on the table, a book, a vase:

all rest in the shadow of their names.

Blood ascends more slowly through my veins

a single syllable beating stubbornly in my temples.

The indifferent light transforms

opaque walls, time without history.

The afternoon has spread out: now it's a bay

rocking the world with its gentle swaying.

We are neither asleep nor awake:

We are, we just are.

The moment lets itself go:

we pull ourselves away; pauses in transit.

Octavio Paz

---

Another translation of Paz's poem:

Between going and staying

the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

---

A link to a discussion of Paz's poem, http://reneegr1.edublogs.org/2009/03/17/analyzing-a-poem-between-going-and-staying/