Glimpses

Glimpses

In a crowd,
endless traffic coiling around,
alien faces brushing past,
hardly a breathing space,
I murmur the incantations
that would let me through
the sound of fury and rage.
I suddenly see a face
walking away at a distance
and I stare at it in disbelief.
A serene face absorbed and unfazed
with shades of gloom fleeting across
the tranquil state.
The places and faces of unfeeling strangers
ceaselessly block my way.
There are moments when I am pretty close, sometimes at an arm's length
and before I can extend my arm to reach and feel
the reality of his being
bodies and shadows intervene.
The distance gapes like a chasm of years yawning,
and a thin sheet of amnesia in between.
In the midst of the people my eyes close
in a dangerous swoon.
The glimpses and visions always come
not in solitude
but in the sheer loneliness in the midst of  crowds.
I lose the view in the midst of action
and the action, like a burden I carry,
pushes onward and down
along the stream
inexorable in its sweep.
Oceans are merely crowds
and the music heard in broken silences of heart
is drowned in the din of thoughts:
the thoughts which are empowered by the need to
work like a surgical knife
to cut around the ribs with a delicate poise
not to let the blood ooze and flow.
In the crowded streets and crowded rooms
glimpses are lost,
the trance doesn't last.
That's the way life flows and we have to call it real
  

Love

LOVE

Love , a private event,
like the private hour of dawn, and squandered away when the faintest ray of the knowledge dawns
the knowledge of which was always there
waiting
in a thin veil of anticipation,
between mystery and revelation,
and i was lured by the succession of the passing strangers in their weird garbs
of carnival display,
a pantomime of passion,
projections cast
on the walls of the cave.
Empathy is a vile thing when you let your precious self be sucked away
.
Love, like a timorous fawn,
bounded away. 

And They Fight

AND THEY FIGHT

Living at the farthest extreme, the border where the nation ends, not the land,
in the trenches, at the highest wilderness of rarified heights,
stuck in the marine for months
facing the broadsides and answering back,
they live. Yes they live, not for the nation
which has long become a myth,
not for the family who they cannot see;
they live; they with the knowledge that the mate alongside
is another soul, sharing a life , the self-same flesh and blood
simply living in another body.
The salt he eats is shared with those bodies, the honour cherished is for the sake of those bodies,
the flag he fights for is of the battalion he belongs to,
and nothing else matters.
Fighting and living and knowing that the mate is still with you,
you suddenly turn when the volleys stop,
and find him dead, just motionless, still,
a martyr, not a sound had escaped from his mouth, not a slightest signal to warn.
You have to carry on. War just claimed another body, another buddy,
a NO BODY, a mate of yours.

You Are not Lost

You Are Not Lost

Liberated and hermetically sealed
i have preserved in this vial the secret of my green forest-days.
This is no wilderness you see.
It's the forest grown
from seeds of the ancient origin,
lying low, lying fallow
in the womb and the limbs of the earth,
in the green birth of the seasons of spring.

Do not despair.
The skeletons now lying in heap
were the rugged living trees
with their roots dug in the soil deep.
Do not despair if you hear it said
that the fables are erased
and the majesty of the trees is struck down low.

Do not despair; I am the forest.
Recall my words you heard,
in the days of serenity and trust:
"I created this world all around you.
You will not stray from this path in vain.
The forest knows where you are.
Whatever be the time and the place
for the wind to strike or molest the soul,
the soil of this earth will hold you close
till the storm and its venomous fury abate.
You will stay low
sinking to the roots.
The forest knows where you are.
Even the ravens and the crows,
the swans and the geese,
the bats  and the vultures know;
all have been touched by the magic-wand;
the forest has distilled the word,
the essential word of life.
Be there rains, be there deluge,
be there tirades of malice and dark intent;
the forest will teach you how
every language is rendered futile
in the final apocalypse.
The heart of the forest is apocalypse.
Let the forest find you; you are not lost.
You are where you have always been,
in the heart of your life and being."

The Solitary Swan

The Solitary Swan

O frigid bird that broke its wing ,
was the tirade in the wind too strong
for you to carry your song
on your light, wispy wing
and brave the wind and fly?
Or were you simply tired
of being left behind?
The lagging behind was neither a weakness of your wing
nor the fault of your mind and heart.
Sometimes the wonders of the sea,
the mystery of the land
hold you back.
Sometimes the nostalgia of the lives spent
on islands no birds have lived in before,
make you want to feel the stories
still living in the sands and the waves of time.
Nothing holds you back except your choice.
The land and the sky and the sea
are forever thine,
yours to make your nesting place
and yours to leave behind.

Sunshine and Sea

Sunshine, sea, sands and life,
sun-drops lying on the path.
Somewhere on a lonely beach
the fingers touching the chords
of a harp that sings to the breeze, winds and gales
stirs up a storm.
Somewhere a hill looks at the sky
and wonders
at the height that the hill can't scale,
the hill has no wings.
Somewhere a gull is breathlessly flying
to reach the hill
and drop in the nest the hiding in the hill.
Some where the sands are lying in the sun
and think of all the boats being launched.
Somewhere a seaman on the high sea
yearns for the land and the home. The sun, the sea, the hill and the gull,
the boatman and the land,
Oh the land and the sea and the sky!

Image: Courtesy +Alessandra Cecchelli

Alessandra Cecchelli originally shared:

2015-03-14

19 photos