Sounds of a River from Retreat

 Dear Françoise Dhulesia, Here is one more poem from the collection: The Retreat.

The Sounds Of A River

If life, a pilgrimage, where do I a pilgrim, go?

I have not found an answer yet.

Since aeons of times, haven't all of us felt

something just being missed?

Perhaps the rivers may know.

But I never fully understand what she says; so grave and inward,

I seem to hear the sound

as if in a dream. The bells on the banks ring and ripple with the waves.

Pilgrims, old and young sleep on the cold stones on her banks

oblivious of what the chilling of the bones do to the body.

Going down the steps, plunging in the waters, a shock running through their bodies, sending tremors of resistance through the spine.

I wonder, are they too, like me, anxious--

anxious with an anxiety they do not know?

An anxiety that has no childhood, no adolescence, no maturity,

only an insecure longing caused by an eternal loss, an eternal loss of the umbilical cord.

I am afraid, if I stay here long on the banks of the river

I may keep hearing the bells ring,all the hours of the day,

see the people plunging endlessly up and down the stream,

anxious to clean every trace

of longing and clinging from the body and the mind.

I can hear even the swish in the waters as the fish circles and jumps up just for a moment out of the waters.

The sounds of the rivers have no end. They folow me all through my days, as if to remind that there is the sea at the end of the river.

And then the river becomes a sweet lullaby,

and her waters are made of the sweetest sleep and each of us one of her waves.

SUSHAMA KARNIK 28 February 2018

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8Françoise Dhulesia, Sem Xtz and 6 others

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Conversation on Sounds of River

 Françoise Dhulesia

Thank you, Sushama, for sharing this journey of yours, an introspection or a questioning.

Since I have read your prose or your poetry, I have been striken by the recurrent presence of water, of the sea, of the liquid element crossing your work like a lietmotiv, a backbone.

This poem is an homage you pay to water and its multiple forms.

Water is ambi or pluri-valent. It accompanies us throughout our life, from the womb onwards and here I see different manifestations of water:

water is ripples, diffusing its rejuvenating power; it is also a music, chanting its rhythms along. It purifies our minds and bodies...and in the end, water is for you as sweet as a lullaby, bringing you back to the reassuring warmth of childhood. And what about the sea? It is where the ultimate step of the search for/of one's self terminates: the circle seems complete.

I have liked the idea of life seen as a pilgrimage that takes us to an unknown destination. And maybe Faith is what makes the pilgrims perform their rituals without any anxiety.

My study of your poem definitely took me back to my reading of Gustave Bachelard's "L'eau et les rêves". (1942)

Here is a quote that I particularly like and that seems to fit today's poem:

"It was near water that I understood best that daydreaming is an emanating universe, a fragrant breath that comes out of things through the intermediary of a dreamer."

There is no doubt also that water is the primary symbol of Mother Nature, and the "eternal loss of the umbilical cord" is covered up by the eternal presence of water in the narrator's life

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Sushama Karnik

Françoise Dhulesia I know my poem went through different phases of anxiety. If I had not let myself immerse into them the poem would have been hollow. I am glad that you as reader did not abandon me in the middle because of a mood that overtook in a s… 

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Françoise Dhulesia

Here is Bachelard on a conference that he calls a "causerie"!

https://youtu.be/Z65E177AEHc

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Françoise Dhulesia

Sushama Karnik I think it very healthy to articulate our anxieties in some way or the other, especially through an artistic expression. I have also felt the notes of "A Quest for life" in the poem. And indeed, it ends in the echo of a peaceful lullaby