Archives of the Self

I have a chalkful of vaporous forms
drawn out of the empty glass of wine
but I cannot make you see
what I chose to write on the waters and the wintry winds.
I have long forgotten how the gravity pulls ,
and here, the vacuum denies a space for me
in the world  of synonyms
for utterances drawn in the antique sorrow
of having failed
before the amnesia of language
that set in and destroyed the  archives of my primitive self;
that self which loved in the innocence of dawn
and lost in the graying of the dusk.

Embarking

Down the path of forgetting
you dug your feet in the sand-pit
for awhile
and then dragged your feet to leave in the wake
a path in the mud , a track still wet; too wet to follow in the slush.
The night when you came to say adieu to all
was yet innocent of the portents.
 They were as loud and clear as you wanted them  to be.
But the revelers were still in the throes of the after-effect of the
song you sang that night.
 Forgetting was the burden of your song
and pain was the heart of the rhyme.
Moving aside from the reveling crowd, I saw the shadow
fleeting like a deadly air
of the thought of our mortality
in the midst of what seemed immortal
in that lasting hour
of love that Time was to translate as fear.
You saw the reaper at the rim of the ripened field
and I saw the harvester come
to bind in sheaf and to stack away
the love of the bountiful times.
You just whispered your message and went away.
"You don't know me", you said. "I am something else.
I have to go and embark on my ship tomorrow.
I am packing; I am going because I have to go"
Where was the harbor, where the jetty, where the sea whose waves you rode;
ever a mystery for me.

The Habitats

The Habitats

The habitats lying in a rubble
were once the nests where these brethren of yours
lived and loved.
The love's labour now a heap of ashes,
the orphaned children,
lost and forlorn, scouring the ashes
for the remnants of the pillars
on which their life rested till yesterday.
Look at these little ones, there is nothing but hunger and fear
and a forlorn face,
and nowhere a place
where they can hide
away from the sky,
your sky, not theirs,
your God not theirs,
pouring wrath on their tender limbs
and hearts exposed to a vision of deadly annihilation
which the sky pours in a rain of thunder and fire.
They lived a day ago
in a land they believed was blessed by God,
a land of the pure flow of rivers, lush green farms and meadows,
a land where hills nestled in the lap of mountains and
the mountains rose to kiss the skies.
That was the land that welcomed all;
it was your heritage too.
You, still a human, how did you repay the legacy of your God?
Your sword pierced the heart of the soil and you did not stop
until the soil gave you the last drop of the life in her heart.
There is nothing , not even a drop more she can give .
Do you ever pause to think how you will live?
Did you ever stop to think where this river of blood and terror
is going to flow?
Did you ever think of how
retribution will visit?
Your own children are going to pay with the same fate for them in store; do you ever think and pause
to watch the future course of this bloody river, where and how it will stop?
Is this the souvenir: of hatred and vengeance
that you want your progeny to carry?
Your ancestors of the ancient past
who had created monuments to history
to celebrate life,
who built the Sphinx and pyramids in the sands,
who once built statues to recall that Buddha's thoughts once touched this land,
Don't you think they are shedding tears perhaps
to look at the scourge the human hand and the human mind have brought upon the land of God.
Who will stop this mad rush ,
life falling willingly into a blind abyss,
the dark forest of a diabolic thrust.
Even if God were to incarnate before your eyes ,
you will not hesitate to kill, for your hands know nothing
but destruction and blood.
Beyond the screen of dying embers and smoke, beyond the fumes and beyond the maddening, blinding smell
of your deathly arsenal is the sky that still breathes,
unpolluted by hatred and fear.
Let a thoughtful respite come
and restore the balance  of your heart
and your pulverised world of insanity.
Let the earth regain her lost reign of harmony , peace and love.
They are not dreams of such a long ago
that you cannot recall.
Let the earth raise her voice and sing
to your ears and the ears of all,
"This is your heritage, the heritage of all.
The land and her life is not for burning and killing;
It's meant to be loved and understood,
and perpetuated for the infinite number of years to come.

Waiting Kills

Waiting Kills

Though we know the spring has to come,
the heart sinks.
In the waiting lurks the dark despair,
the thought that at every step in the dark
there is a wind, high on the hill and damp in intent,
that will beat back
and ride ahead of spring.
The rains, untimely, out of season, will be stubborn
and they will pour rage out of the bleak sky.
And when the spring arrives it finds you half dead.
The things are not what they ought to be.
The days of waiting almost kill.

Seeds

Seeds

When seeds of pomegranates shone like rubies
I ran all over the earth
culling each little seed
and gathered the harvest in my fold.
Each seed a mystery, each a cult
a dancing shadow of a lost divinity.
The myths of goddesses and their search
for the rare initiate
to transfer and hold aloft
a secret excavated from earth,
the sun and the moon, the potentates,
blessing the cycles of the mysterious dance
of origination, growth and death.
And the mysterious cycles had no place
for the love and the sorrow coming in the wake of love.
Goddesses are immune to human fate
of growing from the cell, being nurtured and ending in death.
Starkly unclad by human faith or by the need to procreate,
they carry on by proclivity
their mysterious game of hide and seek,
causing intermittent change of phase
which the humans  see as seasonal change
and ascribe the names of birth, life and death
and with each change, I go back to the ruby seed of the pomegranate
and try to translate the mystery, and fail
because I was deprived of initiation
into the cult of the myth of the divine earth
who awaits the initiate who will hold aloft her secret in his hand
and scatter the seeds right in the heart of the void.

Image :courtesy Lucia Abonandi



The Peals of Laughter

The Peals of Laughter Heard  from Afar

To know the fragility of the unicorn and yet be able to laugh!
Isn't that the secret of life?
Very necessary to know,
difficult though!
And the practice of it, the effort at it
is the whole of life.
And our whole life is a continuous effort.

And I am dancing barefoot
heading for a spin,
some strange music draws me in.

From the heart of darkness
to such light,
timeless behind the veil of Maya,
behind the silence
is the everlasting YES,
the affirmation that
I AM,
a stream of playful consciousness,
the fumes from the Delphic oracle,
all agree that I AM

Hedonistic

Hedonistic

Moments come and moments go.
Try and live a life-time
in the moment in its flow.
It comes with a bit of a smile
and leaves with a mark of sorrow.
An innocent blossom said, "I go,
find me if you can."
I am still trying,
but it has lapsed
very very long ago.
Once I stole from time
a moment of  delight.
In the still dark hours, I found the tale of my life
but lost the moment  and the stolen delight.
Moment by moment,
and moment to moment
is eternity and life.

After the Storm

After the Storm

The sunshine through the columns of dust,
kicked up by the storm that just passed by,
is opening avenues into the sky.
I am steady on my feet, just steady, looking up at the god smiling above me, singing the song of equanimity.
It made no sense while it was raining.
It's different now.
But oh, these hours and minutes of the storm
when God had vanished from the sky!

Only A Bike

 A road and only a bike

Raindrops gather and become a deluge, become streams, then rivers
the ocean cannot contain.
I clamour to cover my head, then clamour for a shelter.
I cannot step back and watch
myself being swept off my feet.
and think,
"Is it happening to me alone; is it happening to all?"

It's a vast road .
Crossing it in the rain, with only a bike.
The road which looks like infinity,
and I caught alone in the equanimity of the sky that is raining
and watching;
The tide behind me, I cannot see if it's chasing me or receding,while the sky is raging above me!
Oh , how can I escape God looking from above in equanimity?

Gentle Breeze

A gentle breeze, may you flow over all the beings
in life as well as in the moment of passing.
Gentle breeze, may you have no name, may you have no sign;
but yet you may do what you have been doing
since the time of eternity.
May you heal , may you seal the sorrows which never cease.
Gentle breeze may you speak and lead by the scent
invisible to all the living beings,
yet reminiscent of what they have seen and felt,
thought and lived in the moments of their personal bliss.
Gentle breeze may you breathe as long as we all breathe;
leave no being alone, leave no soul behind.
Gentle breeze, never cease to speak
when despair closes the space around
and folds in its embrace the fire within.
Gentle breeze I know in my littleness
all the infinite passion you hold
for this blindly groping humanity.
Yet I pray and sometimes doubt
whether you hear my words
or only hear a melody from a remote place.
Gentle breeze, be there for me and for all.
Your freedom be praised.

The Infinite and a Woman

The infinite,
and a woman,
desolate, clueless  under the sky.
"I leave you a bunch of seven keys", he said,
"and one of them will open the sky".

And one day he returned, under a different garb and a different sky.
She still held in her hand the golden keys
which he gave her in the golden days

He was in the princely robes when he went
and when he came as beggar there was no lament.
The sky was empty, but it was closed;
She looked for an answer at him and the sky.
Clutching at the golden keys still in her hand
and at the end of her veil that was about to fly,
She fell at his feet, her eyes moist and her
throat dry.
"You have come," she said, "I have no need for the key and the sky".
You will stay, not wander far;
your home is here in my heart.

"O Woman, what are you talking about?
I have no home under this sky.
I have to beg for forgiveness.
Throw away the keys nevertheless.
They are no longer needed to walk in the sky.
Walk on this earth, barefoot.
I had gone away, hoping to fly
I have come back with the knowledge, not of the flight-paths;
I have come back with knowledge of how it feels
to walk on the earth barefoot under the sky.

The Bridge and the Gorge

The Bridge and the Gorge

When you go far into that country where I lived
there is a bridge atop a hill;
 a bridge spanning across a deep gorge.
and connecting the two ends of a cleft hillside,
and if you peer down cautiously
you will see the gorge and the winding river.
And far above, you will hear its message,
murmured in deep undertones
why the bridge has to be made by man
and why it's forever the nature of water to divide
the lands and hills into two.


Watching the gorge from this height
is the safest way
to talk to the waters
and hear its secrets revealed.
Water arrested, water insulted,
water subjected to humiliation,
is water disgorged
in torrents of fury.
Imperial Man, stay away from this fury;
do not encroach upon its heart.
Cold though it seems,
cool to the fevered brow in distress,
you will be taken unawares
if you run a dagger into its heart.

Untimely Rains on the Coast and the Plain Translation of the original Hindi poem by Neena Dighe

The Untimely Rains on the Coast and the Plains


The season is not what it used be
It has come with a different face.
 The time of the year is deep into the spring
and the sky is a camp of  the rain-clouds, ominously dark.
They have invaded the sky
and they are determined to stay.
The farmers watched the indolent breeze swaying the harvest in ripples of green and yellow
heedless of the malefic signs of this unscheduled rain,
until the soil, warmed up to the omens of the possible hazard
of blight, said,
"Make haste and reap the harvest
The season harbors a wicked intent,"
The soil emits a warning in a silent shudder,
and who can predict the pattern of rains
when madness strikes the clouds?
Those who follow close
in the footsteps of time
are left wondering what went wrong.
They stand in awe of the mystery
that hides all signs of the days to come.
What caused this error to tilt the scales of the powers
that turned the benign nature so dark?
Why this wrath? Why is the dame so vindictive and harsh?
Or is this an augury of a new age knocking
on the doors of the times in fury?
Is this the end of the old ?
We have tampered with nature and teased it long.
Now listen to the scourge, the apocalypse
and its words are dark and loud.
Your pride and vanity, your relentless march against the grain of nature's law,
proclaims the end of an era.

It's the end of summer even  before the spring could reach,
before we could salvage the dreams of the sun
bound in a sacred covenant with earth,
the eclipse of all that is green.

The Seeds of All

Nourish the beginnings;
let us nourish the beginnings.
The seeds of all things are blest.
The blight is what we bring.
The blessing is in the seed.

The love that gives ourselves back
is the love that seeps into the crack,
into the soul, and heals.
In that crack is the seed
of all that lay under a wrap,
the seed of all potentiality.

Love and compassion is the key
the energy we direct within,
first at our dormant needs, our wounded soul,
our scars that need to be healed;
healed from the roots, not denied and deceived
into being what we are not: the carriers of someone else's deeds.

Go into the silence.
It speaks.

It is the transcendent place,
not a place of of rapacity and
empty gestures
that hide nothing
except the need to end it all.

A transcendent place
a place ignored completely,
and yet banned by any predictable force;
it's a home to the unrest of the soul
cleansed of the taints begot of the duress.
Those who manage to remember all this while
the address and the location of that place in the crowd,
for them a home that opens without a key.

Stillness in the Flow

Stillness in the Flow

Standing in the stream
immersed in the moment
I seemed to move rapidly with the flow,
the mighty flow rushing to grow
into a flood of an awakening,
dizzying and eddying in its ripples.

The consciousness lulled,
I struggled to hold
to the world around
in a frenzy to cling to the feel of the feet
slipping on the shifting sands beneath.
I struggled long and then let go.

The water in a gigantic cycle
flowed around,
and I dangerously swayed on my feet.

A presence, immense in volume,
perfectly centered in the gore of the flow,
spoke in a submerged tone
of the sound of the sea,
the wind and the eagle's wing,
proclaiming its existence in all that flows--

Letters

Letters scrawled on the back of a dead man's book
must perhaps look like what we write today in feverish bouts
of the cryptologies of our diaries.
The secret alleys and groves we sought
as our hiding places,
the signs and symbols we invented
to evade scrutiny and preserve the essence
from being violated and drowned
in the invasion of the excesses of language and the fury of gestures,
and in that process opening new windows upon the sky;
All of these will acquire a meaning tomorrow
not known today, hidden as it is under the shroud of our anxiety to hide even from our own self
that which we never fully understood.

Sistine Chapel

Two Hands Touching  in the Sky (In the Sky of the Sistine Chapel)

A child of silence and slow time
a legend haunts about their shape,
a mad pursuit and a struggle to escape,
all breathing a human passion far above,
kisses upon a fevered brow
desolate with the thought
of being left in a debt,
light of wings or clipped of wings,
They cannot leave their little towns by the river and the sea,
streets evermore ,
and the stonewalls of the citadels
closing in on them, wrapped in woes
woes not theirs,  all of the peoples,
of people alien and yet their own,
a grecian urn of a different time-zone
containing ashes of burnt wood and driftwood
plastered upon a clipboard of time.
Two hands frozen in the sky,
close and far apart
forever missing the mark
and yet surpassing death and time
 because frozen immobile
in the stillness of time : God's Time

Interior Monologues 1

Interior Monologues
With the Dweller of the Threshold

My laughter
I shared it with the world.
My smiles
they are for you.
My songs of confidence and pride
were all for the world to hear.
My whispers of sadness and grief
were for you to listen to and store.
In moments of delight and innocence of joy
I would come to none but you.
My failures, defeats,
my wounds and scars will be known
to you and Time alone.
The moments running in a stream
from zero to abyss of infinity
will be braided in a rope with me
to be unraveled only by you.
Life was a task I came to perform.
It became a trust i shared with you.

The robe in shreds flies away.
Did it mean to shield or to hide?
Now the time we spend in walking,
walking barefoot,
tells us that
there was nothing to shield,
nothing to hide.
There is nothing to the robe and nothing to the shoes,
except the need to walk barefoot , free, strong enough to bear the weight of what remains, the bone and the marrow of life.

The dome shines
in the light of the sun
the gold that runs off ,
liquid , brighter with the  rays,
runs off the sides of the dome.
Get closer to it, come to the foot of the edifice; you will find the gates open on all sides. There is no keeper.
The Stupa! The shrine under the dome is empty; just space. The walls are cool. They are meant to welcome, embrace and receive you. Receive your sorrow and give you peace,
the peace that passeth understanding.
The hounding voices of yesteryears
hold no power here.
If you enter, there is no condition; when you enter, is no lapse of time.
Time does not annihilate. It is waiting.
It is eternity, simply because it is waiting.
Enter gratefully.
Silently listen.
Avalokiteshwara has eyes;
only eyes, not one, not two, not even three;
but infinite eyes.
Eyes that speak
the ultimate language-
call it compassion, call it divine, call it the end of all languages that the humans speak.
Breathe, breathe the purity and peace.
This , thy abode, thy only home, has no doors, no walls and no roof.
How liberating! Once you know this,
you will take this home with you everywhere.
In this wandering world you will be free.

"offering to the choir the presence of a whisper."
The whisper never fades. It separates from the fading voices of the choir...And lives in some heart that is awake when another heart is falling into sleep.

The day from the night is a single breath away
though the single breath gathers aeons in its sway.



Waiting to hear the whisper
not the sound and fury!
Waiting for the twilight we share
between the day and the  night
the only clarity I know in life
when I listen,
and know it to be your voice.


Through terrors and trials
stay by me
Through sickness and error
save me

May death tread softly as she comes,
may lift me gently and carry
safe to the other shore
where I may meet
you forever
and all those I loved and lost
in the long travails of this life

May the shadows of lives past and over
dissolve in the sea of your blinding , gentle and calm light


Let this mind which I call mine
be one with thine.
Eternal and everlasting may be the end
of all the shadows leading me through
the memories of hells and paradises


The gentle soul of this tree,
infinitely gentle, suffering silently,
was waiting for you to come and rest
albeit for a little while. You did come at last.
You did come and rest
at her tired feet silently.
The tree found its way to live and way to die, O gentle Monk of the wisdom of the light.

The humble and nameless seeks nothing.
Inside the being with no name
is the universe.
Inside the universe are all beings.
The nameless beings seek nothing.
The humble friendliness comes from nothing.
Everything given, everything received
when the humble beings ask for nothing
and yet the nameless being gives everything.
Love without name, kindness without asking,
friendliness without ingratiating
is the bounty you possess
and the bounty you give.


The melting gold will endure the heat.
The Alchemist has an unending  endurance
for the process to complete and yield
the molten image of the ultimate note,
the burnished gold
with nothing to hold
is delivered into the void.
The Alchemist stands in awe
in the void, none to see, none to behold,
except his Self transformed into Otherness,
His creation and the lover are One.
Why the agony that precedes the ecstasy
when the the Beloved and the Alchemist were One?

In the fire of Time is the rain
In the rain of anguish is the healing balm.
In the healing is the language.
And in the language is the magic enabling
to transcend sorrow.
I came in fear of the fire,
and instead, found the flame
that sprinkled dew-drops instead of spark

Learn only to be content.
Stay awake.
Reflect the moonlight
The burning down eight times and rising again. ,
The well-spring and lakes.
The words of the Zen Master
Love and peace

I dragged all my belongings, useless clutter,
dumped all in the porch; put a lock ,
a giant one,
on the door,
even put a board up!
"To let, or on sale",
and left.
Couldn't resist the temptation to come back and see if there was a buyer.
After four days I came back to take a peek.
There was a huge bouquet plastered on the door and a note
"Happy Unbirthday to the dweller"

The origination in the farthest sense is in 'I', the effect is in "i' and the witness is "I'.
What O Monk, remains to be said when nothing remains to be said. Only the path till the end.

Eternal Yes. Let the smallest of zero find refuge in the space of the infinite zero, its ultimate refuge. Let it not be dislodged ever again.  

Subdued by the whispering Now and the eternal Yes

Enmeshed, jungle, fetters of fetters, not leading to liberation,....
I am an ordinary sentient being who can breathe the oxygen of life in the company of that sedate man Alfred Korzybsky.
I suggest we add views as escalators, views as

"The fundamental ambiguity of being human"

There is life; there is death. In between is emptiness that has space- for anger and love, sorrow , disappointments, and the biggest truth of all, the truth that we are human.


If two then not one, if one , then not two.
These are but numbers and simple logic between which Parmenides, with his Mathematical mind, places the essence.


A deer or a tiger! Know in a glimpse! What if they are in a process of transformation? We must also recognize that moment of occurrence when the critical event occurs even when you do not know the past. Just a thought.


Choice--That too is evolutionary. Reflecting on the present...patterns, of change, symbol-making..culture

Such poetry in the soul of Buddha!
"A shadow that will never depart"!

When the wing of the bird is sinking in the tail, the plumes so beautiful like flowing feathers cannot lift the sag in the spirit of the bird.
A bird is a bird is a bird.


And those who will stay away from the exaltation
will depart with silence in their heart

Sailing ships on the oceans
waving over distances
before they vanish over the horizon.
Ships so distant are meant to signal,
messages of gladness that they met
and knew they were not alone.

Look this way, look that way, look up, look down, look around.
What do you find? Open the door to the heart.
What do you find" Darkness, light emerging? If the light, even if slight, catch the ray and go ahead.


I walked down the street,
came to this house and stopped.
A broken down window, a fallen wall, a rusty door,
and where the staircase led
the dreams which the sunlight saved
of the good old summer days.

The Smile of Mona Lisa

The Smile of Mona Lisa

The smile, held back,
vanished for a moment and slid,
to hide behind the eye-lids,
 then descended to the lips
and played around the contours of her mouth,
flipping around the corners
to disappear in the shadows
of silence that sealed the lips.
A beguiling play the shadows make
when the model sits in endless sessions
hiding the persona in the fleeting encounters
between the soul of the object and the gaze of the artist.
What is revealed is a mystery
forever wrapped away
in the moments sealed, and given away
to the secret bond of silence
that briefly touched the two alien minds
who were trying to decipher the silence
that united them.
The faintest shadow that played around
below the eyelids and spread its gloom,
an augury of the invisible Time ,
the Time that smiled and warned to watch for the signs of age,

caressed the visage and stayed behind.
The portrait, complete, defied age,
while the tremor remained
to speak of a mystery throbbing alive,
the fear of aging and death, caressed the visage and stayed behind the overlaid paint.
.

The Path of Descent

The Path of Descent

The gate of the temple,
the temple of the sun and the moon
will open for you and enclose within it
your translucent soul,
and take your offering  collected over years
of toil of ceaseless travel to the heart of your life within.
Feel the mighty magnetism;
feel the rays of the whitest prism
bringing the rain of love and light.
Millions of stars do burst at the night,
the night when you witness the sun and the moon unite.
Stay in the shower of the love while it pours.
Each raindrop will soak you with
nectar of the dewdrops cast on the leaves
of the lotus with a thousand petals, all in a bloom.
Beyond the world that you have seen
 are your roots in the body, roots where your earth holds;
it will hold you now as a gift,
descending to her in a renewed birth
 from the womb of light and love.
Stay in that silence
of calm and serene peace
and feel your energized roots.
, like those of a sturdy tree.

The Secret of the Moon

The Secret of the Moon

As the sleep descends you will see
the bright star shining above-
a six pointed star shimmering behind
a magnificent star-dusted tree.
That's the sign, you are in the temple.
Be aware of the floors and the walls.
They are the fire that does not scorch.
The spiral path goes up all the way,
till the senses drown;
leaving you neither up nor down,
in a sheer movement that leads to the crown.
Not a lonely ascension of the wilderness!
This is the way the saintly souls
have travelled all the ways, but never alone.
You too, my love will not be alone.
My spirit will accompany thee.
You will feel me right; you will feel me left.
The currents know how to lead
gently upward once you yield
to the momentum of the spirit that lives within.
Float gently on the rhythm of the breath,
light as a feather and free as the heart of the breeze.
Breathe in the stillness and the peace within;
that's the secret of opening the gate.

The Heron and the Sea

The Heron and the Sea

The heron and the fury of the raging sea

And the sky overcast with a neutral grey,

Made the image of the frail bird stay

The whole of that foggy and windy day.

Much was being flung at the frail bird

In a celestial wrath

At the heron in the tempest of a hostile wind.

I saw the waves lashing against the craggy shores,

And the heron, an image of stillness sculpted in ice,

Standing on a rock with drooping wings and a sunken beak,

A forlorn image, a solitary thing,

Watching its fate being written

On the waves and being washed away

Before the scroll could be held and read.

The heron in that moment was closest

To the truth of my being:

Both humbled by the severe wave

When the tide is high and the wind is shrill,

Both struck by the brutality of the silent doom

Of hunger when the hunger is for what they do not need,

Having lost the taste for what the ocean brings

And hurls at their feet indifferently;

A hunger that needs the cleverness of tongue to justify what the soul needs.

The difference is that for the heron

The hunger of its flesh and bones

Is still the need of the body’s vital wind,

While I, the human, gone far beyond

The limits of what once was a forgotten creed,

But now a devastating need

Of my spirit, and the begetting of a seed

For a hunger for more,

A hunger for what my pragmatic self says I do not need—

An encounter with a heron standing in the wind

Has brought my myth

Into a sudden light of the ancient shores

Where I must have lived and died.

The heron freezes, and it will live;

I will survive

Only to die in a loss of wing.