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.