For the Lord and the Lady of the Capitol - Eeshanam Sarvavidyanam

I weep on this New-Year's-Eve for my worlds that have passed away. I await a certain death to come, shivering in the warmth of the dying day. You call me dense and hate me for my love - I give you this - momentary allusion or two besides - Lovers are invariably dumb, especially when it is Love you talk about.

I build a lone colonnade in November and line it with bright roses from February. Thereafter - and still later - ruin ovetakes it fast in the molten shade of the vatavriksha that is so virile.

I call for the end of disastrous headlong rushings into matters of the heart - but who can overcome these many mysterious workings of the Lord of Love - I ask the Lords and the Ladies of the blessed Capitol but there is no answer.....

(You can call it a poem - or just a musing - but for me it is an image - one that has built itself suddenly...into the very structure of my being. Et tu....???)

Mosaic - On the Helm

Constant deliberations that I have made
about that unique afternoon, and evening
weigh down upon me - as does a shade
that bears down silently - a part of being

a tree
all alone
and still steady,
but outworn
within
a singularly worked-upon garden.

Someone waited for a cemetery to materialise
and wanted, furthur, a brief brush to evolve -
a satisfying trope that this text would realise
as a conquest, less said - and would revolve

about
nothing more odious
than a pair of brown lips.

Then, should I be silent, silenced
by an erratic demand made fancifully?
Or should I be hopeful? Entranced
by only a faint hope, wishing dutifully

for fulfillment
at the hands of a white-livered lily
wresting so painfully
with the tentacles that it itself conjures
within-without-all about -
lenses all awry

To my land of dark days
lost in the uncertain calls
of twisted rivers flowing
ceaselessly but erratically....

I think this would be a fairly well-turned-out introduction to the new book.

My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose

smaragaralakhandanam
mamashirasimandanam
dehi padapallavamudaram


My love is like
a red, red rose.
It turns all black
when the evening dews
drench it, burn it,
stain it with more -
Love is the only dream
my love cannot bear.

THIS SOUNDS TOO SWEET FOR MY EARS

I met a small ringing sound
trying to cross a difficult road
into me and my stolid solitude.

I was promised a grey earth
and a primordial sky without black
or white or anything in between.

I replied in no small terms.
I rang my life many a time.

I sat silent then and thought -
This sounds too sweet for my ears.

I let go of it and forgot
about it and me being friends

I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying
I want to share these poems of my soul.
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red

I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out
this heart with which I live
I don't cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose

courtesy - ODDITY - this being by Jose Marti....

Which road did we not take?
Which one was fair and which
was not? Which one
should have lead to what?
Which road?


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - Robert Frost


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I couldn't travel both
and be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear.
Though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh,I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The question of choice in human life. An eternal peril. Surely we know better than that. Do we?