Dusk in the Mountains

This poem was written after an intense experience I had in Munnar during dusk. The sunset was stunningly beautiful. I was transfixed by it. I would sound conceited if I called it a semi-mystical experience. It was something like what Wordsworth, the nature mystic, felt. I felt at one with nature. Unfortunately, I lost the text. What I have written is incomplete after trying hard to wrench out from my memory the words I used. 

... The sun cast its magic

As it set ...

The pale mountains bathe in blood

The clouds freak pink

The speechless air reeks orange

Birds and beasts,

Young and old

Merge selves in red, but drown not

The heavens and the earth

Baptised in blood

Recreated, reborn every pulsing moment

In a passionate union.

In an instant

Dusk slips to darkness

the dark God of unknowing takes over

the unconscious conscious ...

One and yet many

the jugglery of reality

The seamless robe

One the many
One-Many
OM

Dark Night of the Soul

These two poems were written when I was down and out in life for two reasons. I was  depressed   about the real state of my life. Nothing was going very well for me in life.

b)      I was  depressed about the existential state of my life. After my intense search, I had to give up all those many beliefs and conditionings that I held dear to me. So I was nowhere. If you believe in a religion or something else you feel secure. But if you realise the fruitlessness of such beliefs and let them go, you feel damn insecure. You are nowhere. To live in that borderline is depressing. 

Dark Night of the Soul

The evenings burst and fade

The migratory birds silently trace the skies

The nights are comas or demi-hells

The mornings descend too soon

The pungent days drag on

The butterflies flutter a moment

The rainbows startle the heavens

The universe expands beyond reach.

Existence is anaesthetised, drugged

Nights intrude on days and days barge into nights

Evenings merge into mornings

And the morns melt into evenings.

Too many complexities to think clearly

Or to stop thinking

The demon in control

Life loses energy to live

Death plays shadow games

Reality mingles with dreams

The dreamer becomes a dream

Borderlines of vagueness

Semi-conscious myths populate psyche.

Another Dark Night of the Soul (12^th Jan 1997)

Darkness sags heavily

Nothing is certain

The grey mist of confusion

Devours my mind

The vague tunnels

Of the illusory past

Reveal the mistakes I made

At the -crossroads

But where they mistakes

And crossroads at all?

I wish I could slip out

Of this darkness

Like a wisp of light

disappearing into thin air!

Search

From the age of 17 to about 35, my life was a constant search for the meaning of life. It led me to read considerably in philosophy, psychology, literature and mysticism. I found the most meaningful interpretation of life in the views of Zen Buddhism, Buddhism, Advaita and Christian mysticism. Some of the poems written below are a direct effect of this influence.

Brainy Brawn (Psyche)

No brute or beast is he puny man

Staking claims to a superior existence

King of creation, sub- atomic speak

In the vast void of the endless eternal universe

A mind brute, a thinking beast, a reflecting  creature

Result of the frail fragile stuff lodged above

An atomic reactor - simmering, raging, bursting

Altering a wee bit of the immense universe.

If mind be his greatest strength, greatest weakness

It is – friend and foe, liberator and enslaver.

Everything is in it - past and future

Love and hate, joy and sadness, desire and pleasure.

Alas, our minds always in states of unconscious conscious 

Holding on to the past, dreaming of the future 

Creating an ego – seeking security in desirous thought

Incapable of letting go and gripping the present.   

Mind

Mind’s shimmering

Waves of the deep dark god

Ever silent intelligent energy but causing.

The unknown remains unknown.

The waves perceived

As the uncaused cause –

The ego-weaving web in which it is entangled.

Human Birth

Humanity:

evolution’s zenith

carries no haloed glory

but stretches one on a rack

mind throbs of pain.

The tiny bird

sky darts

Free, ever free.

Sky-bird

The sky and the bird

In perfect harmony

And so

The sky bounds by the bird,

Sky-bird.

This is an attempt to write a haiku-zen like poem.

You can hold not

For it defies holding

Like a sieve

That can hold no water.

This Zen poem is my favourite poem as it captures the essence of the Zen outlook and way of life.

Zen Poem

The shadow of the bamboo

Sweeps the stair

All night long

Yet not a mote of dust is stirred.

The moonbeams penetrate

To the bottom of the pool

Yet in the water

Not a trace is left.

This is a poem by a psychic personality.

Divinity is

a give and take

between unknown participants

in which miracles occur

beyond the reach of each alone

yet always happening –

a dizzy secretness

of relationships.

- Seth (a psychic personality)

The Fall – A Dream

There was a time I used to dream a lot. Some of them were scary. In some of my dreams I saw myself drowning in an expanse of water or being chased by a tiger. There were also pleasant dreams especially of enchanting mystic landscapes.  There was one dream, however, which was both scary and delightful. Here’s the description of that dream in a poem.

Lingering along the crystal blue rill

Leaping from slimy rock to rock

Pausing, enchanted by running pools clear and still

Stopping atop a huge boulder,

I peered down the murmuring pool

And slip I did and went sliding down

Slipping wet into the silent deep wetness below

Petrified I was to the bones

And suddenly I was falling no more

down the slippery rock

But rushing down, down a cascade

The roaring white gushing foam enveloping me

Terrified I was no more

And then in a flash

I was racing down a skyscraper

An ecstatic letting go

A falling up
Blissful I was

Jerking back into waking consciousness

I tried to relax and recapture the dream

Alas! Only a spherical white luminosity

Laved my mind’s eye 

Lingering for a while.

Tuttu (Shireen)

This poem was composed after my first daughter was born. I remember vividly the day of her birth. What amazed me was that she didn't look like a newly born baby. She looked like a two week or three week old baby. She didn’t have the redness and wrinkles of the skin or undefined features of the face and the body of a newly born. She seemed fully formed. This could have been due to my wife receiving booster injections during pregnancy. And I can’t forget my first glimpse of her as my mother-in-law held her in her arms. Her eyes were wide open and she smiled at me. I know that as I say this, none of you is going to believe me. But it’s true and I couldn’t believe it myself. She was fondly called tuttu by everyone and as she was the first grandchild for both families she received all the affection she could get. I wrote this poem while I was in Munnar teaching. Munnar is lovely hill station in Kerala, India. I don't have a photo of her as a baby with me right now.

Tuttu, my own,

barging into my life,

your birth 

birthed me to fatherhood.

Startled, I sensed you –

an enigma of life.

Your body,

a tremor of tender life

a streak of energy.

And I smelt the world alive

in your wee body,

throbbing, trembling.

Can I ever forgot

your wonder-filled eyes

taking me in with the world

soon after your birth

and your innocent melting smile?

You are a many-faced god

like the ever changing evening sky.

Bliss-faced sleep,

focused awakened state,

energy, while hungry and at play,

craving contentment while suckling.

Your cute haunting smile

remains etched forever

in my self.

I can feel it flower

on the mountains below,

burn in the evening sky,

melt in the shadowy trees,

and gleam in my mind’s eye.

As I hold you in my hands

I shiver, for

you are a fragile flower

and you could wither.

In you, I sniff life and death

and the world’s pain.

O Tuttu, my sweet Tuttu,

may Life’s energy gush

through you 

undisturbed and whole.