In the name of Love *

In the name of Love, the passion which governs
All things human and natural too
I rise everyday to find how the glorious sun
Brings beauty of morning for all to view,

I think of that Love which binds man
All over the world, from East to West
I think of that World which we possibly can
By our Love, make wonderous and truly blessed,

If poetry is the cause, Rose I think as effect
For its beauty I hold and its wonder my words reflect,

Rarely have I passed a day when I did not write
Over and again I keep on writing on
So many things which give away light
Ethereal or earthly as they, in my words get born.
(* it is a roseate sonnet, as invented by Ampat Koshy and later practised and perfected by many. Many variants of this sonnet form have been created. This one is , however, as per the original form, i.e; two quatrains followed by a couplet then again a quatrain.)

Once on our way to khwai

Once on our way to Khwai

-----------------------------------------

Once on our way to Khwai

We were enchanted by the spring

The road with dreams did lie

Once on our way to Khwai,

We were kissed by the sky

And felt what beauty did it bring

Once on our way to Khwai

We got the rhyme of spring.

( it is a triolet poem having the rhyme scheme ABaAabAb)

A sojourn to remember

Of all those days which have etched
Indelible impressions on my mind
I know that day how did to us fetch
Heavenly wonder that did us bind,

It had been just after autumn
The sky was getting perfect
And we travelled to gather some
Hues with which nature decked,

We reached a cottage, at about ten
There we thought to stay for the day
Walking all the way through the lane
That had gone up there, merrily, so to say,

Outside that cottage there was a bench
We sat there stretching our legs quiet
Gathering how that perennial sense
Of serenity is kept by that day's light,

Later, much later, when the evening came
We again went outside to sit there
And found how the day's sky became
The sky of the night, wide, open, bare,

It had little dots,sparkling things
All over it so enchanting,
As if it told us that our sojourn
Had been a marvellous one,

And we just thought what it could be
That kept us soothed, giving satiety?
Then we looked around us and found
Again, how nature remained the same,
Calm, poetic, blessed, vast and profound.

The ballad of the sea

Seas have their own beauty
They make our earth blue
They make water for satiety
And make voyagers true,

Heard you've been to seas
For seven years you spent
You gathered how the breeze
Carried flowers and their scent,

There you've sung full throat
Several as they are found
Cyprus, Corfu, Lanzarote,
They all gave you colors profound,

And when you from there returned
You put your mind and soul to canvas
On it You created Godly hues that turned
A Beautiful World Humane and Vast.

( based on a painting done by luana Stebule)

A pinewood cabin , just beside Walloon

Just beside the lake of Walloon
At the porch of  that  pinewood cabin
When you come and sit for awhile
Looking at the beauty of the morning
Watching the flowers waking up
From their sleep and listening to those birds singing sweet
The birth of another day,
I am certain you then become a nature poet;

You , I am sanguine, then write verses in your mind-
those verses that say irrespective of place and time
Beauty of Nature remains like the sole guiding tune,
It causes a blessed emancipation
Which only gives one more of poetry,

At dusk too, after the day's works are done
When you sit at your writing desk,
You , I am sure, write down how on Walloon
The dusk gives leaves hues it has gathered on its wings,

Aha! Those hues!
How they make magical reflections,
How they make you a poet.

The boy and the mother at brick kiln

The boy and the mother at brick kiln*
-----------------------------------------------------------
Every day almost on making  journeys to and fro
Taking that road by the river
Find the two , the boy and the mother
At that slum beside that brick kiln,
In that shabby dingy place,
They two shine like meteors fallen on earth
In the morning, out of place ,
Shining still in their own halo,
The boy in his school dress
And the mother combing his unruly hair
Making him tidy.

At the evening , they look like two starlets no less
Or glowworms perhaps
The boy sitting at the dawa of their hut
With an oil lamp burning away
All toils of the day,
Vapour rising from its flicker of hope,
Reading a book or doing some lessons he learnt at school
And his mother sitting a few yards away
With a hand held palm leaf blowing soothing air to her child.
( * as submission to ' Are we mere spectators' anthology )

Dost

Dost*
---------
' kaise ho dost?'
( how are you friend?)
Is that what he would always begin with ,
My friend from another part of the world,
When we would meet ,
Crossing several fields
Like those two little boys
From two different sides
In a flick that championed the blooming of friendship despite odds;

I did not belong to his religion
He did not belong to my customs,
Yet we had been friends
For we met crossing fields several
While ploughing our lands,

We both had been farmers
Tilling the arid earth of our region
Toiling hard to grow green paddy ,

We met at sunrises
At sunsets too,
Crossing several fields,

And if we had some time to spare
We would both sit under a single tree
sheltering us from scorching heat of summer,
And sand mixed dust that blew from desert lands not faraway,
Talking about how the monsoon last year came good
And how we both reaped corns,

' kaise ho dost?'
I would also ask him
Sometimes
And he would smile.
(* Dost: friend,
Written for ' Kaafiya milaao ' )

Walking a few paces

Walking a few paces in haste
we are thinking we've seen the best,
Just then suddenly we arrived at that spot
Where nature  showed us what we got,

And our hearts and minds leapt in joy
For never have we found serenity such
And how we savoured the charm, coyed,
Through the woods as we did march.

A letter from Solan

How many times have I thought to write

A letter to you,

A really long one filled with all the flavours and smell

That came one after another to me

As I went touring from one place to another,

Time,

it seemed speeding  like trains

Hurrying , having its own rhythm;

I peered out of the windows of flowing time,

like a wonder struck one,

Trees went past,

So also hills and valleys,

And rivers too,

I found them all singing for me

And for you too;

At that little station of Solan

When we stopped for awhile,

Got down with what desire know not I,

But those sights,

They wrapped me with curious blessed feel,

At one point thought

I should leave all my bags and baggage there on the loco

And just stay back,

Right there,

But you,

Your face came like call of home.

The gulmohor beside my window*

The gulmohor beside my window

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Most of the year she stands like a known 

Too familiar one,

A tree like others that surround our house,

Giving company to other trees,

Winter, autumn, summer, 

She stands by and large quiet

Barring those mild rustle

That breeze stirs up in her,

 

She stands as if looking at me

Through my window of bedroom,

Knowing exactly what novels do I read on my sleepless nights,

What movies I do watch of lonely evenings,

Which ways I adore my wife,

Knowing the colors of cushions and bedspread,

And also of curtains which sometimes stand between her and me,

Like veil, 

 

But come spring

She will break out into red lustrous hues,

She will deck herself up so gaudily

That I simply can't move away my stare from her,

I gaze and gaze like some one struck by beauty,

 

Come spring,

She turns into a fairy

And gives me wonderous sense of love. 

* published in The Indian Periodical, May 2018

A letter to belle amie

A letter to belle amie
------------------------------
Thought for months
To sit at my desk
And write a long letter
To your address,
Facing the window
The gulmohor tree
Redness when will spread
All over me,
Thought to write a letter
Long and wide
Catching my mind's lull
And its high tide,
Thought to arrange alphabets
One after another
Thought to write archaic
Dipping in ink my feather,
But then these days
Time slips away
Like water through fingers
Absolutely slippery,
Thought to write you
How the moon drenched me
From my neighbour's third floor
Coming home, with glee,
Thought to ask you
'How are you going
From your nights of hope
To depressive mornings?'
Thought to write to you
'What you have cooked?
This weekend, pasta?
Or just chicken corn soup?'
Thought to ask you
So many other things
Like what new fiction you read
Which album did you bring?
But time just slips away
As it always does
Through my fingers
So sieve like, porous.

The Muse Eternal

Had I not been so induced
Love, by your blessed words
You , wouldn't have been my muse
And I wouldn't have composed verse,
Where would then all my words go
For whom would I then write
Where would then my dreams I sow
How would I then feel the starry night?
Had you been not that one with rhyme
How could I have that epiphany found
And felt in every inch of heart the sublime
And by that in poems got more so bound?
Had You been not the One with providence
Where could I have found my poetic sense?

Exotic purple

You wore purple on you all through
Lavender of one kind that settled
You gave me the exotic view
Of lands where you proved your mettle,
You told me how day and night
You worked to fill your home with smiles
You told me how you put up a fight
And walked alone several miles,
Then you rose to see the day
Like a warrior princess true
Before you as meadows lay
With flowers blooming for you,
Then you took a stroll on the lea
Like an angel of a fantasy.

Few lines written on a sojourn to country

The sprawling fields green came open
To us once we moved through the forest
Cottages that stood in the day's flame
Looked like perfect places to rest,
The rhythmic beats of drum
Filtered through foliage thick
And as they to us did come
We thought what was that music,
And then the day gradually waned
As wane our minds and limbs
We thought of all that had been profaned
And basked in light as it seems,
Then we felt the silence of those ageless trees
And the breeze running through them with ease.

An acrostic poem

Marvellous will you call me
Over the land and the sea
I taking the spring's breeze
New like a day's lease
Arrive will I at your door?
Kite like as will I soar
Dashing down and then going up
Utterly beautiful will I stop
Traveling through clouds
Tied by string of no doubt
Arrive will I at your hands?

If I had to go away to the land of spring

If I had to go away to the land of spring
I would choose a country road through green
Red and dusty and filled with aroma of flower
Which takes human mind to that bower
Where it tries not to make words halt and burst
But it makes them wrought by poesy just,
As it is kept for ages in our earth's sacred heart
As it is kept there from that day of our birth,

If I had to go away to the land of spring
I would choose a country road through green
Red and dusty and filled with serene bless
Which makes human mind to find and trace
How for years it had grown there with ease
How it had caught for years that calming breeze
And made expressive that inexpressible thought
That it always for its unfolding haply sought,

If I had to go away to the land of spring
I would take in me all that life brings
And turn them into poems that soothe
As best as I by my mind possibly could
Create and leave them to take winged charm
Till they meet their rhymes to become
Songs which bear that bounty of earth
As they are kept since the day of our birth.

Being woman

Had I been an existentialist
I would have made a wish
To turn me a woman
For then I would find follies of man
And bear flowers on my earth
And make rivers run to make birth
Of civilisations, habitats and Paradise
I would have created  those skies
Which remain blue and ever lighted
There would I become beauty so sighted
And wear on my skin all that women had been
Wearing for ages, marks of oppression,
Hate, slut shaming, lustful gropings in dark,
I would become just a flying lark
And swoop down only to make a treat
Of women rising up to their feet.

( the photoquote attached is of Simone De Beauvoir's.)

In the time of breaking of statues

Dynasties will pass
They always do
And breaking of nations
Will just continue,

From one regime to another
We will just go
And breaking of statues
Our TVs will show,

You will wear a black badge
I will say it has been right
You will stand there with slogans smudged
I will embrace the night,

Then we will walk past
Our broken country with hate
You will raise your sword
I will think of bullets,

Then oneday on ruined broken earth
We will crawl like men bereft of all
You will think of Jean Paul Sartre
And I would think of how we did fall,

You will then try to mumble and sing
A song of love and brotherhood
I will also my self towards you bring
And over our acts with solemn face brood,

By then our country will turn into desert
Without our huts, homes and settlements,
We will just lie on sands, taken apart
By our own acts of pure nonsense.

Julia, her man and the spring

In her cottage lone and bright
Away a bit from din
Julia had been living quiet
With her garden as it seemed,

Her man, the man who went
To different places for works his
Would come home when the scent
Of spring would catch the breeze,

Julia would wait all months long
All days thinking of him
When spring would give her the song
And glittering waves deck the stream,

She would stand at her door
Peering out to see
If by that pebbled path sure
With blooms woke that tree,

For she knew every year
When that tree would dress up so
Her man would come near
Her with mirth that spring does sow

And then he would come, her man
Walking stones of miles few
He would bring for her stories of lands
And adornments with pinkish hues,

He would tell her how in between
His works and daily fights
He found peace of love clean
Giving him soulful flights,

And Julia would look at him
And think of how is it
Spring comes every year as it seemed
And gives her wonderous treat,

She would think of finding more
Beauty in nature around
She would think of how love pours
Only to keep her bound

To love and her man who
Keeps coming back to her
Walking all the roads to
Her cottage,  on the hills, from far.

( the painting attached for illustrative purpose is part of free internet painting resources, artist : anonymous.) 

O

Waltz of spring

After many days from now
When we would have leisure
You would surely ask how
Our words did we measure,

And I would probably  say
It all happened like that song
You when Chopin's Waltz did play
And took me where I belonged,

I opened like a flower
As your fingers ran on board
I took heavenly shower
As it so musically poured,

I looked at your hair
Dancing like a cascade
I dreamt and did dare
Knocking at your gate,
And you like a reluctant lover
Gave rise to those keys
As they rose and also lowered
Like a gust of spring breeze ,

You gave your fingers
Blessed rhythm as cue,
And I in that lingered
Like on  leaf rests dew.