Mohini Chatterjee
Mohini Chatterjee - meaning Summary
Masks of Past Lives
The poem stages a brief parable about identity, memory, and the cyclical nature of life. A Brahmin counsels a boy to recite imagined past roles—king, slave—to quiet turmoil, while the narrator adds Mohini Chatterjee’s consoling gloss: past lives, repeated births and deaths, and the parade of graves may satisfy longing. The closing image suggests continuity beyond mortality, a dancing beyond death that reframes loss as part of an endless cycle.
Read Complete AnalysesI asked if I should pray. But the Brahmin said, 'pray for nothing, say Every night in bed, 'I have been a king, I have been a slave, Nor is there anything. Fool, rascal, knave, That I have not been, And yet upon my breast A myriad heads have lain.' That he might Set at rest A boy's turbulent days Mohini Chatterjee Spoke these, or words like these, I add in commentary, 'Old lovers yet may have All that time denied - Grave is heaped on grave That they be satisfied - Over the blackened earth The old troops parade, Birth is heaped on Birth That such cannonade May thunder time away, Birth-hour and death-hour meet, Or, as great sages say, Men dance on deathless feet.'
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