Crossing

Crossing

Crossing a river from here to the opposite shore
is what you have to do
while alive.
A far more difficult feat
than drifting blissfully along the flow.
And those who have tried both, should know.
A bridge or a boat,
  a navigator, and a sailor,
all have to fathom
the secrets of the flow,
the secrets of the silence and deluge,
the spins and the gorge and the sudden plunge.
The swimmer must follow the logic of the waters
as well as the sailor must.
The power of the waters and the strength of the human,
the skill is in riding above the flow.

Sushama Karnik

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ON THE VORTEX STREET

ON THE VORTEX STREET
Visible in the low fog
sweeping across the land,
the winds do not know
where to go.
The islands are no playgrounds ,
 nor the mountains an easy track.
And a straight path does not lure; the islands, too pliant,
and the mountains too high.
The wind on the island, without a hurdle,save for the reeds
and the bushes that lean and make way for the wind
all too facile, the wind wilts;
then veers around;
goes round and round hissing, fuming,
a cat chasing its own tail.
Then suddenly a feat of ingenuity;
the wind ducks , dips down in delight,
as if it sank under its own weight.
A path of vortices formed, whirling ,upward, downward
around an uncertain centre, everywhere, nowhere, all around.
"Gravity, where is the Earth that pulls?"

And now the mountains, they thrust their peaks in the rare sky.
The wind pushes , hikes and rests; the mountains are a wonderful place to nest; no push or pull for a while.
The wind now longs for a rest!
Everything is rare, the breath, the air
the heightened self,
and the vortices form once again. In the summer the clouds are the same, even though they scatter and lose the way.

the wind rises, and with the wind the mountains move ;
their peaks hold back the shifting wind.
Again the saga repeats; the memory of the island
sleeping in the mind
of the wind, awakes;
vortex forms;
sucks the wind in.
One step forward and the vortex swirls; holds the wind
on a downward swing, an upward swing, a vortex here,
a vortex there;
the wind moves on,
on the vortex street.

Characters From A Jacobean Drama

CHARACTERS FROM A JACOBEAN DRAMA
Why such a frozen look
on a summer morn?
All the bevy of red roses around
like a burning bush 'are bent on setting afire
the heart of the night
for the one last song  for the lilac sky!

The fat ladies playing dice in the attic
have gone to sleep.
The chessboards have no clue
as to the move the master is planning next.
And the barmaids too will never wake
to the sound the rooster is going to make.

You my lady of the Jacobean stage,
The curtain has fallen long back
on the winter of discontent.

The Lady Speaks :
back in the obscurity of ordinary life,
they may call it a summer morn
which may never look back upon me
Those who wanted to carry the memory his touch
have to carry his torch too.
And that's no ordinary task.
i carry the fatal mark
on my person dear,
the garden path is not for me,
nor do the roses warm up for me.
The Jacobean drama was silenced long ago. I know not this path
where the only light is the one I carry; and i have to keep it burning for those behind;
a capricious torch that may burn out soon
if the hostile wind turns against all the legacy he left behind;
And this legacy and lunacy all alike,
are never going to leave me in peace



 

Goodbye Little Town

The purple night lingers on the hills
and the clouds still flirt with the night in the sky,
as the morning hurries to light up the frills
and lace the curtains as they eastward fly.
Rooftops slanting and the sunlight slides
to dive onto the street and paint it bright.
Shadows bristle,and behind them glides
the prancing, lilting spirit of light.
The day begins, initiates an ardour
for life with an urge to move and set aright
the errors and the wrongs of many a night
 and Godspeed, let the little boat leave
the mooring and  the harbour waiting for the light.
Goodbye little town of childhood delight
The purple night lingers on the hills
and the clouds still flirt with the night in the sky,
as the morning hurries to light up the frills
and lace the curtains as they eastward fly.
Rooftops slanting and the sunlight slides
to dive onto the street and paint it bright.
Shadows bristle,and behind them glides
the prancing, lilting spirit of light.
The day begins, initiates an ardour
for life with an urge to move and set aright
the errors and the wrongs of many a night
 and Godspeed, let the little boat leave
the mooring and  the harbour waiting for the light.
Goodbye little town of childhood delight

Language : A Failing Tree, A Fallen Tree

Language : A Failing Tree, A Fallen Tree

The tree will not fall where we expect.

But we, the apprentice of language steer the meanings

Row our boats in the storms.

The winds of difference blow over and delete, erase or substitute

The things of no substance, a vibrant mode

Of speech transcending differences.

The direction we steer in

And the direction of the wind;

Both out of the bounds of the pressure that builds

And we fight the winds and the instinct to steer, impose a will on a language we utter.

And it forever moves ahead of the meaning, refusing to be transfixed into a concept or a motif.

Language grows

Into a gigantic super power shedding the loads we make it carry

An unstoppable, gregarious force that must connect and bridge

The differences; the sinking vessel must carry

The giant spirit to the other shore of meaning

Before the substance flies away.

False dreams, empty visions, dawns that arise and turn into terror the language we speak and fail.

Boats come loaded with differences,

Having lost the moorings in the sea they called their friend

The land thy called their mother.

There is an untouched portion at the core,

A life that I cannot reach unless I wear surgical gloves.

Unbridged, lacking a connection, we are stripped of language that could scale the heights where the word difference and power hold no sway;

A distant dream, too remote to translate in a word.

The tree will not fall where we will it to fall.

Let us be out of the way when and where it may all.

 

RIPENESS IS ALL

  ·  Image Milam Pavlovic

RIPENESS IS ALL
Words of a scarlet beauty
tumble down the slope
and we watch
in a surprise and awe
time's seasons held in the palm and the fingers
like the petals we count when speculating
the destiny of a precarious love;
odds and the evens chasing for a privilege,
as the river runs its course.;
a red scarf lying recklessly scattered
on a black iron surface of the bench;
thus looks the vista of a season gone,
a beauty chaste and a pale dawn emerging in the wake of a night

The one I had lost without a clue
emerged in the sky when it was the night
in the lost one's sky.
It was a crisp and clear
sky of a cheer
when I spotted the presence
of the lost moon's orb
behind a leisurely, lingering cloud.
I was desperately seeking a chance
to pick up a quarrel with the truant moon,
Now in the robe of the ascetic grey
renouncing the world in a gloom;
and now in a worship of a poison ivy
spreading the garb of her diversionary fangs.

Somewhere in the distance
around the bend,
stands a tree,
alone and marked
against the mass of clouds,
its branches proclaim
that it's a survivalist plant.
The reeds of grass,
the pebbles and thorns
at my feet, lose the sting.
The tree sways.
Its faraway charm elevates the sky higher still.
I may have to walk a mile
before I reach the shade of the grove which takes in the tree.
From here at this spot,
I watch and let heal
whatever needs to be healed.