ON THIS DAY A RIVER SPRANG

Jun 19, 2016

On this day the river sprang
out of the murky corner of my mind.
The window opened suddenly bright
and the coffee mug began to sing.
There was nothing else around
except a sky I could see
offering a clear path and a patch of greying pink,
and this book that lay by my side,
pages fluttering,
raising winds
to a place where the mountain spring
frolicked and slid on the willowy slopes of time.

Tanya Dimitrova origianlly shared the image: the image

Cryptic Meditations 1 and 2

Apr 30, 2016

CRYPTIC MEDITATIONS
Let the waters of the glaciers flow into the lake
and watch the colours spread
in lighter streaks on the dark blue surface.
Watch the mountains glow
in orange, red and purple tints.
Feel the weather go suddenly cool
and next, a burning desert and a sandstorm
.
Cross the desert to reach an oasis
watered by a placidly winding stream.
This is the place to camp.
There will be no loneliness in this solitude
and no need to talk;
the inner landscape will stretch and open
to include all.

May 1, 2016

CRYPTIC MEDITATION II
And there where I camped
I rested tired in every limb,
could not even fall asleep.

Something I heard coming from within.
With a great persistence, it said, "You are going to die"
Strangely, I welcomed the thought,
as if a mother was calling me
and I was eager to fall in her lap.

"I am ready," I said and sat still
letting at last
the voice to take possession of me,
quietly.

"You are going to ascend; hold my hand all the while,
and you'll have nothing to fear", said the voice.
In that calm stillness, accompanied,
I was rising,
each gradation filled with a surprise,
a wondrous journey all along,
a slow pleasure
of a languorous kind,
through ranges, divides,
planes, plateaus and peaks
and I wished it would never have an end.

Suddenly the momentum increased;
I doubted if I could hold on to the voice,
and before I knew who, what or where I was,
I lost,
I lost my sense of identity.

A terror gripped me,
as if  a meteor, I, was  being drawn
into the orbit of a celestial body,
a certain fall if I could not hold
to the plank which was this body;
this body did not matter
so much as this mind
which  I could not give up when forced to the end of my being.

Falling, or being pushed upward?
Now there was no difference.
Falling, or rising, but irrevocably,
and the indescribable fear of emptiness, the void,
and being blown out like a candle against the gush of the wind.

And in a mighty moment as if in a defeat,
a surrender, something happened...

An ocean of light,
and I was the light;
to be nothing but light and yet not know!
Who was there to know?

The light, an ocean without a shore,
a waveless expanse,
there was no more I, no more EYE
which could open and say, " I saw"

Yet something of the consciousness, the last vestige of awareness
was storing the image on a blank screen.

Gradually, the world of the senses came back.
I was in the familiar landscape once again.

And it rained like honey,
the streams ran down the slopes of the mountain all over me
and I drank in the spirit,
the raining grace,
the dew of the dawn when everything arose
in full view
out of the Void once again.

Татьяна Громова originally shared:Image received via +sem xtz 

A Walk By The Interior River

From the staircase of the University library
to the meadows opening in the sunshine of April
I range over a history
lived inside,
outside of all histories that come and go.
In the few steps measured to the flow of time
I walk by a river, her silent murmur has no history
as I flow with her in these lawns I had left far behind
only to revisit in a need for rediscovering time.
This river that flows and becomes me, an interior of a shadow
inside a grove, where choice has no more relevance in its silent gorge
than a last pebble thrown , creating a ripple,
and lost, not knowing how long ago.
This river silent, self-reflective,
her history merging with all
unknown lives, lived and immersed and carried to the sea.
I may need a bridge to cross
but the river has no need for one.
She teaches me the irrelevance
of histories written, a mockery of her majestic flow.
She lives her own biography,
drenching every page with water born of some sluice that danced
in the wilderness all its own.
Here after all I know
that sound is born of silence and the river is of space too,
a space she must make
all by herself and for herself alone.
Here as I come to her shores,
paths and roads stop all of a sudden
and time passes by them
into all the places I travelled before.
Here by the shore of this interior river all I know as God
floats like a castle in the air, seeming real and intangible.
Something tells me that temples are not made by kings  and labor
of human hands
but by prayers of pilgrims
and colleges are not made by donations of potentates
but by the leap and the aura of light within.
The archways and the spacious halls
of these places of learning
where boys and girls in the prime of life
are making waves and weaving dreams
that a better world be ambled in their space of life.
A river is a river that lives and flows soundlessly,
on the pulse of giving and weaving dreams

Poetry courtesy +Sushama Karnik​ 

The Petrified Goddesses

The Petrified Goddesses of Stone

Some goddesses are carved out once
and now petrified into stone,
their organic, vibrant life gone,
they stand into the view of all,
without substance,
A fate worse than being burnt
to ashes.
The ashes are carried away by the gentle wind when it comes.
The goddesses in stone cannot die such a complete death.
Monuments for the cruelest mockery of time,
they are condemned to die a frozen death.
The worshipers of idols do not know
that the petrified goddess was once a woman of flesh and blood,
of this earth you inhabit now.
Do not sing hymns for the goddesses in stone; they have neither the ears nor the eyes to derive comfort from the soulless pageantry of yours.
Watch the goddess closely and you will see,
there is a deep mark of a deep gash she carries on her throat, a mark of a fatal blow,
that the maker did not envision there when he intended to make beauty out of the stone.

A Dialogie Between Two Selves

Dec 22, 2015

A Dialogue Between Two Selves


Self 1:
Say something, I am here to listen
and then I too may speak of something of mine,
It looks as if you have lost
the language that spoke from the heart.

Self 2 :
The long intervals of tears
have set in me the habit of crying
I have forgotten those moments that made us laugh.


 Self ! :
Why, look how the moonlit night is shining on you.
The dark fortnight is past.

Self 2 :
The moon doesn't bring light to me
Dark clouds invade the heart.

 Self 1 :
Recall the promise that the new sun makes.
Do you not owe something to this life?

Self 2 :
This way-darer has lost the way,
 estranged from the goal, she is groping for light.

Self 1 :
Ask your heart,
the heart knows the way.

Self 2 :
The effort of walking and surviving the travails of the road
have so left me drained,
I have lost the memory of the place I wanted to reach,
now all I want is rest.

Self 1 :
Open your eyes and see how close you are to your dreams.

Self 2 :
Dreams were like a candle-flame,
a warning to the fire-fly not to move too close.

Self 1 :
A moment of closeness to the flame
is the memory worth carrying forth.
As for me, I have forgotten the  searing caused by the flame.
The memory of the warmth is all what remains
and that is what I owe to the life and this world.

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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 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

Image Credit Kostas Michalis

Window Shopping

Dec 20, 2015

WINDOW-SHOPPING
The year is nineteenten,
four years before the WWI was to start,
this boy, probably sixteen then,
now a tribute to photographer's art,
with longing in eye,
hands in his pocket,
gazing as if in the sky,
watching the object,
the object of desire,
A drum mounted on a cart,
held on display behind the window screen,
and the boy watching tight-lipped,
a flaneur,with his dreams suspended,
the dignity of window-shopping
on  an NY street on a morn

Hector Merced originally shared this image

New York (c1910)

The SIren Call Of Shadows

The siren call of shadows
cannot have possibly sucked thy sister
into vortices of murky waves.
Though fiends tried to cover her embers
in suffocating, vile barbs,
she, after all, was your kindred soul.
It's not too late for her
to be able to hold
thy extended hand and rise.
She hears the sounds of your silence
and feels the fragrance of the childhood rose.

Alleys

Mar 26, 2016

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There are alleys and rows
of little homes
I scarcely know;
they are hiding in dreams
and come back to light;
not a dazzling light,
but lanterns swinging
with the insomniac moon,
and half asleep I walk
wondering at my shadow,
wondering where it's leading me.
I, like the finite, indrawn world
of alleys, anonymous, winding
indiscreet, a human universe
of ignorance and folly.
The night must be gloriously dark,
secretive in shielding the sorrow and the joy,
of her denizens, disturbed and mysterious,
happy, sorrowful,
petty, magnanimous,
the night is everything to all.
And I feel an exquisite peace
in visiting the alleys I have not seen before.
I must have been a sleepwalker
sometime in some life in the past.

A Rather Long Short Story 18

Charles opened his schoolbag and drew out the folded brown paper sheet. I helped him spread it out carefully on the table and looked at Emma. Her eyes were fixed on me. It was a testing time for me.
I asked Charles, "Did I tell you, I am on the sea most of the time, handling machinery. Your Dad was perhaps flying aeroplanes, fighter planes!"
Charles smiled pleasantly. He had lost his Dad before he had gained any knowledge of what wars are about and why and how they are fought. I was moving into troubled waters. What did he need most at that point of life? Knowledge of how life is lived, or the love, tough and playful, which only a father could give? And I could read Emma's mind now. I could see that the reason why she was thinking of marriage was to give a foothold in life to Charles. She hoped to find a man who would be both, a husband to her, and a sort of surrogate father to her brother.
I stopped in my tracks ,as thoughts moved swiftly across my mind. I didn't know at what level I should steer the conversation, at the level of Charles who was in need of a strong support or at the level of Emma who was caught between a youthful restlessness and a responsibility that held her pinned down to her parent's home?
She sat there facing me with a defiant indifference that I had seen in her in our first encounter. I was afraid to ask her any questions about the seriousness behind the direction in which her thoughts seemed to be moving. The look on her face seemed to say that she had divined the trepidation in my mind, but she was not going to brook any deeper scrutiny of her thoughts. The kind of mask she wore seemed to say, "I will smash my ship on the rocks if I please. It's my life; I'll steer it myself!"