राजेंद्र किशोर की कविता
Summary
The text presents a poetic meditation on isolation and dissolution within an endless expanse of water. The speaker recalls birds that heralded the dawn and animals that signaled a return home, as well as voices that repeatedly called out, prompting ceaseless journeys. Now, these presences are absent. The speaker is immersed in water, with no one to offer or receive a voice. The water has consumed settlements, cities, countries, and all memory, leaving only water surrounding the speaker. There is no sunrise, and the terror of darkness does not engulf the speaker; water alone serves as the indicator of directions and the speaker's boundary. The speaker is paralyzed and silent within the water. The gentle touches of the wind are beyond reach, frozen in a deep blue sea of ice. The speaker's immeasurably long arms, raised upward, have dripped and sunk into the empty, unsupported water. The speaker gazes into the water with the faith of a fisherman, but finds no fish of submerged arms, no vortices, no ripples. There is only the conscious sightlessness of the eyes, the liquidity of water floating on sensations, and ultimately, not even water, but mere liquidity. In this liquidity, nothing visible or invisible, audible or inaudible, light or dark exists. All is absorbed into a silent, inexpressible, extra-sensory water that drowns the self-consuming speaker, a water that is beginningless, endless, ahistorical, and without expectation.
Conclusion
The document presents a profound meditation on isolation and dissolution, where the speaker is submerged in an endless, silent expanse of water that has consumed all landmarks of civilization—villages, cities, and nations. The implications point to a state of radical disorientation: without sunrise, direction, or sound, the self becomes "self-consumed" and history-less. The outcome is a complete sensory and existential void, where even the act of calling out has no destination. This suggests a crisis of identity and communication, as the speaker's outstretched arms and voice dissolve into nothingness. Ultimately, the text implies that when all external reference points vanish, the individual is left only with the ineffable, fluid medium of pure consciousness—a condition both terrifying and transcendent, where the boundary between self and water blurs into an eternal, silent present.