At What Cost, O Thou City?

 

Lost world or call them worlds,

On the pavements, by flyovers,

In slums, by traffic lights,

On railway stations, and bus stands;

A trail ablaze,

Howling, hissing in its smouldering stupor.

 

Serpentine curves of life amidst

roads glutted with tired travellers

and buildings choked with bleak elegance;

Each bend thrusts a shock wave,

Badged with the numbers of struggle

people falter, bawl, hackle and sneer

with thick-veined throats and emptying souls.

 

The urban rosary and its beads:

The halt imposed by a red light,

A mother in torn, soiled clothes,

He/she held in arms and rags,

Pleading in front of the windscreens,

And the wealthy rag-picker

searching lust in the garbage;

Green light beckons the stampede once again,

And taking a carnal sip for free

the already privileged reveller jolts away.

 

Beggars feigning sleep among foot taps;

Humanity dancing to the tunes of hard heels,

Wheels rumble overhead,

As the trams screech and cringe over the bridge,

Killing by sparing them to live in a mass grave.

 

A big car chirrs and whirrs

and smiles glossily to defracture the void,

The puffiness hovering around the wheel,

Alas, spacious more for

accommodating the emptiness of the soul;

Rich eulogies for the poor graves around.

 

Lost worlds piled up in a bigger one,

Fed on something squeezed tight and narrow;

Ghostly and visible not,

Its spirits turned wooden,

And multiplying at mere pin-drops,

What to talk of human efforts, Metro?

Beyond Moon and up to the Soul

 

The lonely star twinkles for me,

Shining still brighter than the full moon,

Full hearted in the cold, milky sky,

While others sleep to the moon’s lullaby.

 

It casts pointed, long shafts of arrows,

Over chilly, rounded, moonlit landscape,

Engraving rays play filigree

with the ghosts loathing light, but out now!

Meanwhile, ogles this world just the beauty ‘round’;

Encircling lewd stupidity,

Destined to beat the same path,

The same journey and its similar vanity.

 

I welcome the winks from the

fluctuating one, whose needly rays venture into

the deepest corners of the heart;

Ditches, ravines unfortunate,

where the round beauty’s shower reaches never,

So they also smile as fairy rings,

Like prosperous moonlit palaces;

Caper and pearl in abalone come to life,

As its pointed rays caress the prickles

and seep through the entrance narrow.

 

Needle away the fear in a nest,

As parents return not and the nestlings huddle;

Peep through the thatched roof,

Help the feeble lamp inside,

Battle then the corners dark;

Streak into the narrowest gorges in minds,

where luxurious moony rays reach never,

Star, thou light up

far more than we ever believe.

Firefly, Thou art Life’s Sparkle

 

Firefly, you are nature’s cutest sparkle,

Twinkling to celebrate the mysterious wedding,

And dance to the tune of crickets and katydids,

Thy single leap in the air

matches ours from the caves to Edison.

 

Glow the branches like a Christmas tree;

Swirl over lake muddy like a lighthouse;

Caged in the puffs of hair, thou smile,

Starry beetle, thou cast a dim light

on an eulogy unknown

on a grave remote in the forest.

 

The wind whirls around you,

But you still glow like a candle

fighting for life by the deathbed,

Glow thou in the haze of winters,

Like the auroras of the Poles.

 

On the tender palm of a child,

Thou glow still to light the future

printed on the rosy, soft skin,

Thou have passed many hands,

And read the lines of

Hitlers, Gandhis and many more.

 

Sparkle like a gem from

the poorest of a thatched hut,

Make them the Kings of the world,

Shikara, cross, dome and stupa,

You sit on all of them

and still retain your real self.

 

From the moments of ecstasy supreme

to the predator’s clutch,

thou only smile,

To light and glow,

Touches which a lonely heart

to make it alive and hope again.

Destinies in Drunken Laps

 

Like a drunken old man,

The tree sways to the December breeze,

Intoxication of age, alcohol in one,

The other with the spirit of the air,

A boozy synchronism!

The old man and the tree,

Winy hearts and the swings.

 

Legs unsteady; walked too much,

The tree too, does it

sillily in the syrupy cold,

Veins and vegetations drunk!

Synchronicity involves two more elements:

A caterpillar among the leaves,

Clutching like the grandson

in the grandpa’s fragile, shaky arms,

And so the swaying moments go on,

The tree and the old man gyrate,

The infant, the caterpillar hold.

 

Really gentle is the breeze,

Makes not noise among the leaves,

Soufflés inside the body old,

Gentle and feeble same,

Very calm and noiseless!

Some leaves now and then

break off and fall serenely;

A sylvan goddess plucking them,

Similarly, the likes of the old man,

Full with age, go heavenwards,

The leaves around the caterpillar’s,

The old men around the boy’s,

Calmly fall one by one,

But they hold on,

The caterpillar and the child.

An Atom Leaps, Snakes Hiss Around

 

Purple clouds, fires ablaze,

The atom danced profusely,

The soil around its feet got burnt,

The choreographer talked peace in future,

Peace! In invisible poisoned wombs,

Not in the beak of the pigeon white,

The reactor fumes coloured it black,

The black messenger flew around for fifty years,

Talking of peace with its

tearing talons ready to prey upon

anyone who won’t believe in manufactured peace.

 

Death centred on missiles privileged

blackened earth dark without peace,

A trauma of half century,

When thousand Buddhas smiled and feigned peace,

A peaceful country now becomes

more so with another noise underground,

And lo an earthquake endangers all

who had been made too safe by

the numerous stockpiles around;

The nuclear snakes,

which can bite for once and all,

Point now poison in an earthworm,

Why not? A few furrows by the latter

lay bare the hollowness beneath.

 

The nation that never hissed,

Only jumped like a rabbit under attack,

Now takes shelter in the steely womb,

which the python cannot digest,

Nor can play the cat and mouse;

And the mighty keepers of peace

go making floods of tears around.

Beloved, Thou art Life’s Sestet

 

Your love became soul’s food,

O my lyrical lyre special;

Intoxicated was every pore and cell,

Mind lost its relevance,

Only heart ruled over the show.

 

Body vibrated with thy name,

Love-blinded, the eyes saw only your dreams,

Thy voice drummed on the plane of my being,

Millions of nerves sensed only you.

 

Time and this world sped off for me,

I got time-frozen for the eyes deep and brown;

Red, curvy lips eager for a smile,

That moony face bewitched me.

 

Path’s prickles smiled like you,

I stepped over, where was the pain!

The mind didn’t reason with heart anymore,

Even in sadness I glowed with visions thine.

 

Now, away you are; ever to be seen?

The soul cries, lynches each second passing by,

But, thou are my last lines,

And will remain so, till I die.

Fenced Jaunties

 

Billions jangle, survive, obey

the instructions of a single urge;

Of infinity,

finites which itself

by kraaling simpletons in a common craze,

It lounges to exist forever,

And the night-walkers sleep-walking,

Moving in the shadows

and believing it to be a bright sunny day.

 

The ever prudent God, the shrewd muleteer!

Measures His fathomless depths

with puppets playing on strings of ecstasy and tragedy;

The luminary lights a bit of the stage,

Death and darkness but circle around,

where the light of reason and faith

escapes with the escaping soul.

 

The five senses slipping over the oily scalp;

Tongues turned steely by quoting borrowed words,

Nostrils get clogged with the smell of decay,

Eyes take the last shot of the puzzles around,

Ears drum for the last to the eternity’s beat,

The touch of mystery leaves more clueless,

And all it turns out is a

journey from nowhere to nowhere.

 

Sheep peeping across the fences barbed,

Hoy! Bleating jargon longing to voice the truth last;

The final mystery meanwhile

buried underwater like the lotus roots,

Above, a water lily blooms under the owl light,

Excitedly flickering to pamper

the Himalayan vanities scattered around.