Saturday, September 5, 2015

Aylan Kurdi

Do you belong to the sea,
Or do you belong to the land?
For you were found asleep
where the waves end up in sand.

Where did you come from,
where on the earth were you born?
Seeking peace in the turbulent waves
Your home, they say is war-torn.

Who did you look up to,
those who didn’t know even your name,
those who trade your kin for greed,
or those who play this beastly game?

Angel, you weren’t made for this world
For the lines drawn across our lands
Slice through our very hearts
Staining with blood their hands

You’re free now, unlike those hollow hearts
Fettered in merciless intents and feigning humane,
Alas, that refined world is too mute and dumb,
For they can’t feel the human pain

Your silence shall pierce through the noise
of cold hearted men, their machines, their halls,
whose fake justice camouflages their shadiness,
haunting ,ricocheting back from their walls.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

The Story


Did you hear the story,
Lost travelers tell each other
To kill time in endless forests
While in search of a road
To take them home eventually?
I had told someone, was it you?
Or was I telling it to myself,
The day when you left
There was no road ahead,
Nor one to retreat
I lay on the crossroads,
Face up, arms stretched East West
Nailed with persistent penitence.

Patience looks hard in the beginning
Harder midway, but fruitful in the end
Likewise I turned into a compass
On the crossroads like a milestone
Telling it was a long road ahead
Longer even to retrace
Unending on the right, infinite
On the left, still,
I worked like a compass,
Showing North, Upwards
The shortest distance was escape!!

And then, the whirlwind came
Turning the compass into a weather vane
The tempests of Fate!!
Lost in the foggy forests
North, was everywhere…..
There was no escape!!

The story ends,
Unfinished….

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Genesis


Starting with a spark
Silently smoldering my sleep
Whose ashes I collect
In the crucible of my conscience
With a lancet I pierce my heart
for a few drops of crimson ink
whose pain fetches some tears too
And all these I pestle
Though in pain
To etch my imagination
On the sheaths of my soul

(I share this poem with my readers on the World Poetry Day!!! A poem about how a poem is born.)

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Artemis


Gone is away the day and warm
And there is ecstasy and your charm
As your silvery beams stir my passion
I feel awed ah the sublime sensation
You have been there from the dawn of time
And in many a great poets rhyme
There with you for the night’s stay
I spend with you after the long day
How lovely you are how sweet your face
Together with the grace there at ace
O’er the black your silent creep
Strikes the strings in my heart and deep
The shining pearl set in carved jet
With a million dots weaving a net
The floating clouds make me more mellow
As across the black but quiet they row
With your silver etched on their flanks
As though in return saying thanks
Playing with you hide and seek
Like children fair innocent and meek
I too am lost in your silent play  
I wish there for ever you stay
Oh but the night when you aren’t there
Some melancholy seems spread everywhere
Again those million stars but are
Sad and alone from you being far
Though the sun in the morn comes to rescue
The lone long nights thoughts pursue
You remember yours and mine first tryst
When I was a kid and there was mist
And again and again our rendezvous
You come to meet for you are true
A friend in this subtle solitude
Unlike the world rough and rude
This secret tryst you never delay
Since first we met and till this day
Unlike men’s youth you wax and wane
Which first comes, then gives way to pain
We men are young but once in life
And the youth is cut short by the time’s knife
But you like phoenix just come and go
The secret of eternity you seem you know
From my garden comes a sweet breeze
Along with your silver sets minds at ease
And the rustle of ivy leaves
And buffets come as though some one heaves
Comes the crickets sonorous chirp
And bats are busy in their haphazard trip
The flowers in breeze their heads sway
As though to each other they some thing say
Perhaps whispering about your grand grace
As you come o’er Wullar to see your face
As you peep from east the roses blush
And to watch you all night creatures rush
And there on the silent shores of the Dal
As a heavenly pearl gleams the Hazratbal
That crystal rim round your fair face
Glittering as a diamond lending you grace
Of which sailors say ‘tis ill fate
But ‘tis the crown that makes you great
Like a princess for wedding who is adorned
With a youthful king lately enthroned
A pearl in the white shell on the shores of some bay
That with its brilliance makes night a day
That arouses in lovers wild songs of passion
To experience bliss in an amourous sensation
The taste of love intoxicating as wine
Burning and hot as the torches of pine
I but with you search my solace
With you the rendezvous I fail to miss
There you are innocent children’s
Who gaze at you and cry in glee
But remember the face that I’d love
Till loves last limit but here I am now
Sheathed in solitude and you are my friend
Now the broken dreams never seem to mend
The pieces of whom I hide nor display
The lone lovers like me till late night stay
Watching you though in grief indeed
Perhaps some ruffian too of some ill breed
Though with little feelings in his heart
And someone poor smitten by Cupid’s dart
Stares at you for his love’s at sale
And still he loves without fail
With a wonder sheen when you shine
O’er the marble dream Taj, the lovers shrine
Glows and shows what power has love
That surpasses time and shows men how
Love endures and lives on with time
And the heartless people call this a crime
Oh ! Artemis there you watch like a fay
The lovers the sepulcher wherein they lay
Some poor lover too in moor or mead
Playing doleful notes from a hand made reed
Whose melancholy cadence till far does ring
Defining sweet pain of loves sting
And your silver lends him little solace
For he is yearning for his beloved’s kiss
Of Endymion does this make you think
For you too loved till loves last brink
Me thinks what at all love does hold
Bringing misery and woes all untold
But true love ah! Is but a blessing
Only unlucky escape its sting
The ailing hearts then never go astray
The way you make night look like day
Love too brightens the heart and soul
This love plays a melodramatic role
Joy and glee and in it I see
Some sort of some divine melancholy
Does all this joy and all this pain
With the end of man go in vain
From high in heaven do you see the streets
Where helplessness and agony life meets
Where people sleep without a bread
Their poor young ones without a thread
See our world where the mighty few
And the countless helpless live
Oh! Hear Artemis! what I do say
Here weak ones the powerful slay
And heartlessly flows the poor’s blood
As unchecked goes the crimson flood
I too like you but silently see
For my heart all this cant dree
And in some fear my heart throbs
And all the life’s joys this fear robs
So sweet of you how kind you are
To me too near even being so far
Of you I found in Eiliot’s study
‘La lune ne garde aucene rancune’
You shine every where plains and brooks
And unbiased on honests and crooks
The night you shine my fears allay
The fears that innocent hearts slay
Amidst far away sung some rhapsody
And of your beams the unstrung melody
Touches the passions deep and down
And lights up faces the faces that frown
In deep valleys play light and shade
And among grave stones where dead are laid
Where ghosts seem to wander but quiet
Lest some poor living one has a fright
On distant moors play light and shade
As breeze sweeps across the glade
And sparkles the cool of the stream
Like million diamonds one sees in a dream
But all this feasts uncared lay
Some one like me all would pay
Your grace and all this never to lose
But unpaid the lone hearts you amuse
And all those who are all life recluse
And to you of reverence who pay the dues
Ah look into the east again the day is born
Adieu Artemis for now comes the morn.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Amante Egaree*



They belong to each other
Like lost fragments of jigsaw puzzles
Leaving behind perfect faults
In a faulty perfection.
Like colorless voids in a colorful mosaic
And silent spells in a symphony
Calling each other through a maze of sounds
Dispersing, dissolving, diffusing away,
They belong to each other
Like falling leaves of a tree
Crumbling, crunching, giving away
To silent soil, silently
Like future dreams of far way past
They belong to each other, still,
Without belonging to each other.

* French for Lovers Lost

Amante Egaree



French Translation by Jean-Manuel Duhaut, Director Alliance Française Hyderabad



Ils appartiennent l’un à l’autre
Comme des fragments de puzzles,
Laissant derrière eux des fautes parfaites
Dans une perfection fautive.
Comme des vides pâles dans une mosaïque de couleurs
Et des pauses silencieuses dans une symphonie,
S’appelant l’un l’autre dans un labyrinthe sonore,
Dispersés, dissous, parsemés,
Ils appartiennent l’un à l’autre
Comme les feuilles mourantes d’un arbre,
S’émiettant, craquelant, se donnant
Au sol silencieux, silencieusement,
Comme les rêves futurs d’un passé distant,
Ils appartiennent l’un à l’autre,
Sans toutefois appartenir l’un à l’autre.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Armageddon

The argot was arcane

That left me desolate

Why they inflict pain

Why brethren they hate

Once called as blood

That flowed in the veins

Now flows as a flood

Leaving crimson stains

Trust too easily betrayed

In our pleasant world

Weak often are preyed

And into oblivion hurl’d

‘tis the big brother’s day

To harass the meek

The mighty devils slay

Then justice seek

In the high prison walls

Innocent prisoner cries

Cries sighs and falls

Till blood in him dries

The voice of the just

Unheard in the noise

That kills it as the rust

Even iron destroys

Pallid faces in sorrow

Colored in grief, deep

Wait if tomorrow

Happy sun does peep

‘Had some one been bold’

Has been by its use

A cliché grown old

Leaving no excuse

A dead slowly stinks

And is lost to clay

Some change in winks

Some with a delay

Time will always heal

Sometimes late sometimes soon

So shall it unveil

Butterfly from a cocoon.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Dumbfounded?

Dumbfounded?
My silence
Turned you deaf!!