The Silence

'The Silence' is my second collection of poems where I have taken care to include poems dealing with the secret chambers of human heart, and poems revealing a complex and rich treasure of emotions. As a sensitive poet, I pour out my concerns, fears, ecstasy through these poems, attempting to trace the social, philosophical and spiritual environment around. I have come from a literary circle, a family well educated with an intimate knowledge of art and poetry. During my childhood, my father had made it a rule that every night before going to bed we would have a literature reading session. This has undoubtedly helped me to mature as a poet and evolve my individual style of writing. I have always been interested in the universal themes of poetry - love, life and death; most of the times my poetic personae tries to incorporate the world in the cosmos of her womanly existence. For her the world is full of miracles, which she constanly discovers in her poems, and her senses are acutely open to life when she continues her quest to unravel the mysteries of man and universe. Life is a flux disintegrating in eternity, and the human being has witnessed a relentless time for centuries - dismayed, helpless and daring. This collection contains some of my very favourite poems that reveal the poetic personae with her vitality, passionate striving to be free and her pronounced feminity. The woman's voice is the centre of the world she creates, and love naturally is one of the central themes. It is the essence of feminity, a form of realisation, a creative and regenerative impulse. For me, woman is at once tender and powerful. In her total surrender to the irresistible, fateful feelings, she ironically becomes a rebel against conventional norms and becomes very modern. Some poems are a reflection of the personal tragedy of the human being, which of course, cannot lead me to metaphysical pessimism as I regard death and suffering as the inextricable part of the rotating wheel of life. Sorrow is my constant companion through life with its joy and misery,the point where happiness and despair meet. Some other poems reflect my acute perception of the topical and current events of the world we live in. However, I feel, poetry goes beyond an immediate reaction and record of the present; rather it attempts to lend emotional, moral and philosophical dimensions to the world around with a view to individual freedom. I wish, poetry could be the harbinger of peace, plenty, harmony and universal love....

A few Poems from 'The Silence'

LONG AFTER

Oh, the restive butterfly of my mind
I wish I could put out
your luscent wings, so that you can fly no more,
nor can you flounder from flower
to flower, nor even can you add colour to the pastures.

Your dreams – soaked mind remains
for ever understood.
Your shameless body ingrains pollens of dreams.
Your song is imbued with pain and anguishes,
And your impassioned madness;
Outstretching your pains, you beg alms from flowers;
Putting on the garland of infinite anguishes,
Don’t you get fatigued?
Don’t you burn your colourful
Wings or yourself, when you flounder
Over this blood and hunger-bedecked earth?

All are in the ceaseless flight.
All ride in the sense-studded charist.
The moon also knows-how lonesome is her plight
how desolate is the night
The wearing traveller also knows
that this life is a mirage
Yet the stars twinkle,
people throng and thrive in the desert.

It is dark now –now it is light.
Now it’s the shifting sand dunes
and now it’s an appalling gruesomeness.
Many a hope, this birth heralding a hope:
life’s mad pursuit of death,
death’s pinning for the ‘Nirvana’.
You are not an invalid !
You too look for flowers-multiple and colourful.

Rapturous rain after the sizzling summer.
Light following the shades of darkness.
Silt encrusting the earth after the flood.
The earth is all green again.
death of a flower begets the birth of a bud.

Oh blind butterfly,
Don’t see anything, don’t eye anything.
Only suckle, flower after flower.
Even when they store venom.
Let death engulf you,
Let the centuries miracles not wane
for your death alone.
in your death, perhaps all woes can easily be treasured
in the backyard of darkness,
or in the half-broken glass,
or in page 13 of the green grammar of grief.

Flower – hungry thou art, O my dear butterfly
Your heart is as intimate as the expansive sky.
I wish, I could put out your luscent wings,
you would not stand a beggar
at the threshold of flowers.
Yet, long after your silence a fragrant
Garland would be hung beside your corpse.
You won’t beg for the flowers,
and their fragrance at someone’s door.
The flickering age and the in capacitated
flowers would shed molten tears;
Surely they would flood the bosom of the earth
with their offerings, and pray
and wait for your next birth in vain, in amiss.


SILVER SMILES ON MY LIPS

Even when my mind is aflame
and soul afire
even when I walk on
the sharp edge of life
you hang like silver smiles
on my lips.

Even when I wonder I’ve forgotten
my abode
in my own nestle
you fabricate your presence in all the molecules
of my life blood and7
with in the glowing charcoal
of my soul;
you are my resort, you are the den.

Even when mind’s hazy eyes
fail to reckon the earth
and all my endeavour
fire to have a space here
I watch a future from
an unknown distance--
the dream of a lightening
moon kingdom.

Even when I watch that time
has plucked the feathers
of hope
I catch my breath
gather the broker plumes
sprinkle the clouds onto them
I became a poem
I love to see you mesmerized
by the beauty of muses.

Even when the carnival of life
the illusions of body and soul
the tears of temporary vanquish
the devil of jealousy
the proud smiles of victory
the aching souvenirs of the past
all seem meaningless
I would not need the spring after winter
as you masquerade warm tender love……
you hang like silver smiles
on my lips…


THE INSCAPE

Every morning I get up
habitually to perceive, then to listen
to the long ,sulky,complaining,musical
melody of a bird
so close to me in my visionary hours
who I’ve never seen
whom I search endlessly through my
pretty little windows.
The secret adds more fancies--
How would it be?
Red? Green?yellow? pink ? violet? Zinc?
Or the colour of all my dreams,
the ”dapple’’?
Swinging with the peculiar tune
I do my brushing, bathing prayers mechanically,
dancing with the melody I forget
this body, this existence,
get into the vacancies of blue,
feel a rhythmic pulsation and wait
for another song,undeceiving,pure
like a rainbow.
Though the strangers outside and the
most intimate stranger in the mirror
every moment wish me to forget the inscape,
to get me caught,
the echo of the little one’s song
reminds me throughout my days and my evenings
of life’s melodious modes meandering
that go in a separate route
which I must discover,
of life’s peculiar bonds where
my bones and veins sway in a chain
more humane,
which I must encounter.

A GARMENTED METAPHOR

To save my own shadow
from piercing sun burn
I struggled vigorous, exuberant
day long
losing my self
in the flight of the
shadow and the sun

Now in the darkness of the
night
when I drop my swollen
heart heavy
hackneyed, tired of
guarding my
shadow from the sun
alone
neither the sun
nor my shadow
are shown in the
silver air….

MOMENTS

Moments come and go
Like my maid servant’s talkative daughter,
Moments get missed inside the vibgyor,
Green, the equilibrium of
violet, indigo, blue
and
yellow, orange ,red
Moments get lost within merry baskings,
or even within
the magenta or turquoise.
Moments are dappled,
like the dawn or the dusk,
like white
Moments are impatient
like an un married pregnant;
Moments make and mar,
Make one a bird, a cockroach,
a pole star , a grass, a poem,
a magic ward, a Socrates,
Moments change the order of things
the macrocosms, the microcosms,
Moments contron dreams, knowing not
dreams only let moments
to simpely pass by.
Moments are proud –moments are moments,
and nothing else is .

MEMORY

Memory
From paper – boats to
blood streams,
from cockroaches in the
bed-past to
my paralysed legs
stir ,and move up to
Renunciation !

Memory
from their rose garden
to our sun-sets,
from the homing sparrows and squirrels
to the splendid life of
hot-afternoon-tea, chit-chats,
communicate up to
Redemption !!

Memory
having wings of a falcon
and thighs of the ‘sphinix’
remaining in losing hearts
of Dushyanthas and Shankuntalas,
sublimates lust and love into
life and art, upto
Revelation !!!

THE PLEASURE GARDEN

In this manoeuvre
named Olympus each moment
I throb mysteriously,
I’m a woman.
Puff out every thing that
may choke, strangle me.
I’m a moon in the faraway sky
seeming timid, shining,tired
from behind a thin sheet of fog.
Yet no one ever knows
that I love this odyssey
at time flying high in the
mind’s sky
I’m woman.
I’ve abandoned the earth,
taken up exile in a
self fashioned cruel city.
I can’t be slave to
summer and rain and the
shameless chains hanging on the door.
The lazy winters fascinate me
my delusions hang like orchids
silently playing a ‘touch-me;’ touch-me’
game-if you can !
I’m very woman !!

THE SILENCE

When heaven watches
my silence through the corridors
of clouds
I close my wakeful eyes
as I can't afford to see
more of life--
I am an overfilled balloon
ready to burst.
In a tranquil mood
comes a spontaneous flood
I listen to the silent songs of falling leaves
Singing and rejoicing in the wind.

In a pleasure dome of rare device
I crave to create a fairyland nice
It's the way of life now
the silence...

Glorious as sunshine
the roots of wisdom penetrate the
cells of my being
till I merge with mother Nature
I teether my words
bury my thoughts
splinter every other image
and think
does my silence
have long enough arms
to touch the stars
in heaven above ?

Like a flood of refugees
words rush to my pen.
Lips prefer quiescence.

Nothing remains
but silence...


GIVING THEM A SMILE
(For Tsunami Affected People)

A torch, searching something,
Fountains and mountains as one,
A face that looked prematurely aged
wailing on the corpse of her dead infanton her lap,
Melting clouds and fading doubts,
The world seeming hazy with a flux,
The endless horizon burdened with
heaps of dead dreams
name and fame vanishing
leveling the rich and the poor,
Misery as the other name for living,
The seeds and the new sprouts
buried in dust,
The ominous ozone hole
staring with the kill
at the north and south pole
Acid rains behind cool smiles,
Green hopes descending
shrinking when the sea
would swell and pull all,
The aliens secrets of Nature
dancing with the Fall,,
Heavy winds stare, then yell
Agonizing, alluring, unwanted
unfinished, sybelline dream
of the night
broke with a gall.

Let's listen to the roots
and ask---
can there be a tomorrow
where the world could vibrate
with sweet anticipation?
Can we give them a smile again
caress them with morning sun's flames
and with hope of a new dawn?
Can we mend their live once more
and green the curly, leafy hill?

DIALOGUE WITH A FISTFUL OF TIME

Thus spoke a fistful of time:

hang the hills and hearths
keep pains and pleasures aside
try no more to reach mirages
carry your dead to the yard
by yourself, as time hath no time.
On this topsy-turvy landscape
See the rise and fall of waves
Clashing against the hazy horizons.

Water hath no colour, neither smell
Yet seems blue soaking the sky.
Monsoon clouds mar the proud white moon
Who rises with hazy brightness.
Do not die licking salty sorrow
Smile, keep smiling, breathe, keep breathing.

Then spoke an image female:
how can I be sure
that each corner of my city
is secure as life?
When they declared me guilty
Did expose the hidden truth, living;
is it any use now if I keep
a fistful of time in the safest corner?

WOMEN

(I) Rebirths :

Heart aches, then bleeds feeling
this meaningless, motionless,
purposeless survive of womanhood.
Again, doesn’t it guess a
purpose, an immobile motion and
discover a meaning
when someone else breaths
licking the blood of
this aching heart?
This is but a mysterious pleasure
of experiencing rebirths
in the same birth,
Frailty, thy name, no more,
is woman.
Ascending I meet the roof of the ‘self’
descending, I meet
the bones of my dead dreams,
the skeleton of my love,
dry thorns of my green leaves.
I dwell in mere moments.
A cloud of dust
and woman,
I resemble all.
Then the latent heat
stored inside
burns the ‘self’ falling
to reach all.

(II) The Self :

Everytime I meet the woman in me
I decide to balance her
but everytime I fail
for I only meet, never reach.
With all the walls about me
my ‘self’ echoes the ‘self’
and I wish I could speak
from behind the walls,
could reach and touch others
leveling all misconcepts
In my search for a river
in the land of rivers, search
for a star in the sky of stars,
and thirst for a drop in the ocean
itself my ‘self’ echoes the ‘self’,
someone peeps out form inside
into the free air
mounts higher and higher.

(III) The Opposite Sex:

The pleasure of being a woman
the opposite sex, in immense
Opposite
by Nature, in dreams, ambitions,
obsessions, recreation,
purgating the creation, performing roles.
Opposite, perfect and different
having beauty
of face and the soul as well,
the better part of man and
the mirror or God,
teaching affectability to
the opposite artless,
heartless one.
Woman smiles
sucking the venom of life
opposite to the sweetness
set in two sides of the coin.

The Cosmic Upsurge

From our cracked failures
from the scrapping teeth of time
away form the cheap and loud triumphs
from the sheer malice of the humane
come out, come out,
exchange hands
of darkness with light
with a cosmic delight.

You have seen the emptiness of the full—
the earth, air, water, fire ;
felt the particles of the strange emptiness
pierced the vacuum with rays of hope
time and again
turning beginnings to the end
with desperation, sweat, heart
and ended up with the beginning.
Come out, come out,
time is ripe for as cosmic rise.
View Him
above the ephemeral dream layers
of all the continents and islands
undiscovered, unexplored.

A land with no maps,
directions or a compass, unknown
and confused with deadly
sharp edges, with
gold bearing sand, spices and fruits
engulf you.
Come out, come out,
share your dreams with Him.
He will tell you
how a new world has just been created
where the heart is fresh
shimmering like exotic stars
above the eruptions of the sun,
of volcanoes, human passions.

When the memory of the planet would be fading
woods green and seas azure and clean
take you to a newer world
where others’ tear pain more than your own.
A breach of the laws of man would
hide death at the top of ruins.
It’s time.
Exchange hands of darkness with light
with a cosmic delight.