I intend to record here some of my poems written long back and turning brown in paper. May be online, they remain fresh. Is it not?
1) A Cyclist's Anthem
Space is dynamic
Time is adjustable
Legs weave miles into minutes
Threading destinations and recreations
I take a kind of Viswaroopa
Roads roll into me.
And my eyes spread the world before me.
The wind towels me like a mother;
Smells converse with my nose;
Sounds are parabolic off my ears;
It sweats into dryness;
People are transient
Places adhere,
Time becomes a vector,
Thoughts sojourn;
Water burns the travel
With the fueling food;
Man is different from the animals;
Repetition begets progression;
Nose goes in search of smells;
Senses visit the perceptions;
Poetical transportation
Of pious rowdyism indulging nature
Pedaled philosophy of imagination two-wheeled.
***
2) Books
Friends penned and bound;
Memory in paper;
Thoughts await forever
The prying lens of mind;
Past in backups
Formatting the future;
Algorithams of human endeavor
Flow-charts of experiences
Verbal hearts into written minds
Eternal giffs of ephemeral lives.
***
3) Viswamithra for a second time
Uparishravas! Don't fall down!
After all you have spoken the truth;
Why should you be pushed down,
so ruthless by Indra?
Uparishravas:--
How can I ever stop,
When Indra is at the top?
The wrath of Indra has wrought my fall;
He asked me 'Who is the greatest on earth?'
I told him, "I don't know;
When I was down there
people used to say of me so.'
He got wild.
'Are you my equal?
Dare you sit by me?
Down below is your place;
Drunk of your ego,
you've lost your grace;'
His wish tumbled me down
Too quick even to frown;
Uparishravas! Don't fall down!
Tell that retail trader
That you are way beyond his exchange;
Tell him that he after all
shines on glory dearly borrowed;
stand firm on your humanity.
To be a deva need not to be divine;
Uparishravas:--
Who are you, so kind and fair?
What can you do to stall my fall?
If anything please do it now;
Otherwise, pray! pity me not;
Pursue thy way and forget me what;
I am Viswamithra, friend of the world;
I can stop your fall,
Reverse you back
And rend asunder the gates of heaven;
No no Sage! don't send me back.
Rather make me born on earth
Fie you! a simple lover of earth?
mundane got you bound?
mortal flesh hath eaten thee mind and soul?
Nay Nay Sage! not so base;
Never the putrid taste of sensual
But I want to be born in the isle of Sriranga.
I heard my case argued by the great
Bhatta Parasara of Kuresa born;
That put me into shame
for all the pride I had
about my friendship with the deva-gang;
Only He, the Father, Mother and Friend of all
Will rejoice and rejoice still more,
When His child excels, shines and outshines;
Others will scale in envy,
and scape his fall with wrathful eyes, thousandfold.
Never I thought of Him;
Never I worshiped my own Father;
Never I slept on my own Mother's laps;
Never I cared for the One and Only Friend of men;
How many births I want to be born to make amends!
So my Sage! so be thy grace;
Your falling tears shall consecrate the blessing.
***
4) Agnihotra
5) Aging
6) Markets
7) Knotted fine little thread
8) The story of Yayati
9) May be
10) Darkness is soluble
Brahma Muhoortha.
Hour of gods.
Darkness about to beget its dawn
The early hours have begun their roads to morn.
The darkness is too thick and visible
The stove has begun to burn in the kitchen;
The flames remember the setting sun,
Tamed by the bowl of milk placed on.
I thought somebody was at my doors;
Some friend to chat in dhyan;
I came out to see
The East about to light its oven.
Perhaps it was the east that tapped my doors;
Ah me! I have forgotten my stove in the kitchen...
Oh! the milk has kissed the flames
and dropped to the stone beneath the burner.
I put it off and came to the front yard
to close the doors.
Who forgot to put off in the East?
The milk of Sun has kissed the Sky
And dropped to my doors beneath.
Who delivers the milk over there?
And where is agnihotra? here or there?
The calves are licking the dripping teats;
The rays of Sun touch everything
Agnihotra is complete.
***
Scaling the walls of Time
The tender feet turn into tottering legs.
The big boy turns grey
Revenging all the big things of his early life;
A pralaya measured from birth
Maturing in the mortal death.
Time universal metered in subjective stops;
The shrunken space is tanned again to distances;
Consciousness unawares being drawn
into several maps of experience;
mentally constant in a physical change
turns the code to a physical stop;
Mind walks where the legs were once
Dreaming through miles of spatial joy;
Man born as a little being
Grown tall to become a child again;
Vamana grows into Vikrama,
Becoming back again a Vamana,
Measuring the world in triple ways
Through body, mind and soul;
Leaving all he learnt
As the giant soul of the textual world,
Mahabali, the ever present scribe.
***
Markets are marvelous in a way;
Poets dislike them they say;
But I find them homely
And I can write their charms;
Anyhow they do me no harm.
A corner in a market is my coveted place;
The jostles surround
Leaving a sort of calmness in that bay;
Perhaps the left-over of everybody
Or further still the lost for ever of many;
The shops make you feel differently
Each in their own way uniquely;
One will make you feel an icon of style;
another one will make you a glutton;
still another makes you a flying angel;
yet another making you a connoisseur of arts;
But one shop is there, which I dislike;
The repair shop of anything;
What you have valued so far
is devalued with a vengeance there.
The road-side shops breathe
an air of anti-establishment, cheap and fair.
The soul of market is ennobling somehow;
I like to sit in a corner,
Where the passing jostles surround,
Leaving the bay in calmness.
***
Who is greater?
God turned into a man;
Or a man turned towards God;
Or a man whose God is a Man of God?
God descends to man
As an answer to abundant prayers;
Man ascends to God
By the rising call of aspiration;
A man devotes himself to a Man of God
Out of what?
The knotted fine little thread,
Not enough to tie,
The reason, do you know why?
Which is greater?
The knotted fine little thread
Or the reason that is behind?
None can say
or who can say?
Or how can anyone say?
***
The story of Yayati
in two words
once more
in one word
again
in one letter
Z
wordless
dot dot.
Youth begetting old age,
getting a lease of youth
again to become old
forever.
***
May be....
Sometimes you are made to think
It's better to be a petty-shop wala
Than to be a great soul.
Sometimes you feel...
May be.
***
Power-cuts for two evenings
Unbearable
wretchedness man-made
Darkness tangible stretching time
till midnight
downloaded from the sky
and the sparks uploaded
overseeing our avastha.
Thick of guilt is tanned
by the invisible hands.
Consciousness made more visible
Cosmic scales rehearse the final showdown
Blinkers in the sky
bear the contrast
for the dotted darkness around the candles.
Prometheus deceived by men
And Zeus in laugh over the unchained god.
Is that the laugh?
Or perhaps the aeroplane is on.
Whatever, darkness is soluble in poetry.
***
Srirangam V Mohanarangan
***
