A SONG TO THE SELF

       1

How adventitious

How incidental is my birth!

Falling and merging into

the mother womb’s den

from the paternal ‘dot’ filling

Millions of life-spores

both entered the cavern of womb,

serving a ten- month term there

then born as myself

How adventitious!

How incidental is my birth!

                  2

Still I remember my birth

Bending to the light-beam without

holding her belly in pain,

my poor Mom did sip

the chalice of bitterness

The suffering that bliss of birth gave....

I stretched out to stand

hitting the walls of the womb

tightened that entangled ‘chord of birth’

twisting, writhing, turning and burning

the movements of blissful pains

My Mom endured

in hope of my birth, there were

blows on the doors of the womb

and I was born.

I know well now, that bliss on her eyes,

and even now hear in the layer of my ears

the tunes throbbed within her heart,

How adventitious!

How incidental is my birth!

                            3                                   

The ‘Fair of the world’ I was invited to 
by someone, and  I came

The senses of ‘sight’ my eyes acquired,

and that of ‘touch’ my skin

and the splits of sound my ears sensed,

and my tongue all those  ‘smells’,

Thus I became part of the “Fair of the world”

                                    4

My childhood I remember bright

Kids of the same age, we bought played and frolicked

Learnt all that our village tutor taught

passed off the days without woes

One had the dragon fly lift tiny stones

One threw the lively fish into flames

 Another would chop off the legs of the crab

Thus played and flared, we little kids

Tiny mud-huts we built and knocked down

with laughter wild

Gathered pebbles and did fling to the skies

the pains of life little we knew

the burden of toil and all...

                                      5

Traversing boyhood, I reached up my youth

And gaped on the shores of the vast sea of life.

Clearing all hill and green my Dad did burn

Bearing the hot meal of rice on her head

Crestfallen became my Mom....

Kins were there all

but have-nots who trod on life’s path

Sharing the burdens of Mom, at times

I stood as a prop to my Dad

And learnt all those throes of toil

in that little hamlet, my homeland.

                            6

Passing my youth hood

the ladders of Manhood I scaled

Quenching thirst with the bitter drops of ‘Living’

Tasted alone the pangs of woes

Feeble was my Dad,

strolling the bitter paths of life

He set on a sojourn to eternal worlds of yore.

With Mom and my brothers with me

And taking leave of home land

my little hamlet, for good I left

                                   7

 Alien lands,

A country sans dear and near

Languages strange, cults exotic,

A total world unknown...

Built up we soon, merging with all these

a life that was new.

To make farness near

To own alien customs,

some lent a helping hand, ho!

A sense that we no more are aliens.

dawned upon us before long

and all our sorrows of

leaving our homeland did cease,

And I walked upright with pride.

                                 8

“Something is there in your body

that absorbed my name”

said the blest grandsire,

His saintly hand caressed my hallow brow

the trill like a Lightning shock flowed on to me.

A brief sojourn through an alien land I took

unknown bliss, unknown ecstasy

The flower of wisdom bloomed.

                            9

Humming within the indoors of heart

someone the “Ragas of Life”...

The Octave tunes...

Heart throbbed in tune with, that

stream of the ‘music of soul’.

Smiling, the grandsire accosts

to shower his blessings.

Fixing my looks on that face,

tear drops abounds in my eyes

like a soaring bird does,

The parrots of my thoughts fluttered to heights,

My mind overflowed with that bliss

And poems did swing on the tip of my tongue;

I wistfully hummed aloud

                              10

Betwixt my grandsire’s lips

flowed luscious songs of the sacred lore

The flood of wisdom that was dammed in my heart.

Gushed fast braking barriers around

Throes of vicious experiences were

Born as poems, verses and songs

suited to the acts on the stage of

‘The Fair of the World’.

Will I be linked in the unbroken chain of

poetry’s eternal row?

A blinking star in the westernmost horizon,

walls of the sky of my soul,

A star with light of my soul

the milky white beam spread along

the vast blues of my mind.

                                11

Hail to thee

The glorious might that sowed the spark of

knowledge in my heart.

The darkness of ignorance

melted away with thy touch

and my soul got enlightened.

Now I see Truth as the glory of reason

and the somber games I witnessed were

part of the drama called ‘Life’.

 The coupled dance

that vices and graces in pair do play

really shape this life in Truth...

The laws of the world, now I know,

are all the concert of ‘Life’

                              12

Oh, knowledge’s light,

Hide not from the boarders of  the sky of my heart.

Oh, my might of wisdom,

shower for ever thy glare in the sky of mind

I grope for ever for the pearls in the depths

of this endless ocean of tasks.

Neither to sell nor to string on my garlands.

I too will be washed away

in this mighty tide of Time

The pearls I seek, if they be got

Will be kept for those come after me.

                                13

Strive brothers strive, be pledged to work

You won’t be beaten realm of work

Move forward, fixing your eyes

Without turning back worried with woes.

Any flame of knowledge will die

If you touch it with ambitious pride or lust,

Lay all your life for ‘Work’

Fixing your eyes at Knowledge’s Light...

Take rest never,

Seeing a hill, your eyes should be soaring to cliffs.

The glory that follows a selfless act,

Never will be got with ‘Lustful Tasks’

Wages of Karma ,indeed,

Will come to your hands, if just...

                            14

No, not for you,

The noisy chantings, meditative fasts

and such games.

Peep into the glorious mighty glaze

that sits in the ‘inmost’ of you.

The Diety you seek shall be found

within the sanctimous shrine, your heart.

How long ever you tarry to learn that

The vibrating life-spark within

The saffroned robes

And the throbbing glory of soul in you

are seeking the ‘One’,

your swaggering fancies will live as so long.

Oh, seeker see,

Spread vast and wide,

In the realm of verse

Are there ‘Books of Wisdom’ to quell your thirst.

Find out seeker, the truth in them.

                           15

Aspire I much

To sing the songs I love

And to compose my words after tunes, but

The quill never swirl in my finger tips.

Full many a verse I penned!

The Muse didn’t spy them yet.

Someone has locked up the holy shrine

Where that comely Goddess reigns?

None in this homeland of mine

Lend their ears to hear my tunes.

My kinsmen say, that

“The Age of Verse” is over alas!

A mad man am I

Before those eyes?

Pested with the cataract of ignorance

An ignorant fool who is squandering life

By wooing and dying for VERSE.

                            16

Within this me,

Passions galore

But senses are not bridled yet.

My sense of Action lacks the strength

To reach where my fancies rush.

No one to lent a helping hand

Dear ones are farther away.

Knaves reach from there

To fetch back me here.

I should wander here like a tramp

This ‘Sun of Action’ without Acts.

                       17

Inscribe thy emotions, fancies and all

in verses  and sing them aloud

 tuned with your thoughts

Caring to nothing and none.

You’ll have to scale further to reach the END

The boat that carries you never will sink in the sea.

Carry on friend...

Neither fright nor anguish shall deter you

Time will reckon all your Acts.

Enemy to none, enmity never will touch you;

The sunbeam that fondles the flowery shore

Reaches to coddle you too, don’t you know?

Look at the garden you water all day with

Knowledge and truth.

Don’t those brilliance and fragrance

Gladden your eyes and senses?

                         18

Passion is that by which I being led

Frailties of mine, I come to know now

Though my innermost murmurs that

“Self-less Act” is Action in Truth,

Passion sprouts from corners unknown

like bubbles of nothingness.

Clouds of laziness shrouds wisdom

As clouds in a rainy monsoon.

The flames of wisdom flinches back

Into the ash-blanket of ignorance.

I know now the truth that

Passion is the root of all woes in me.

                             19

Oh, solitary sojourner,

Kins will never seek after you

in this your special flight

You are not in the group to be ungrouped yet.

Poignant thoughts are leading you

Let your conceits be illuminated bright

Look into thyself a while,

Open the portal of love,

Breezes of love may blow indeed.

Knock at any door with FAITH,  dear,

Verily opened it will be.

Could you get peace by wailing thus,

Reckoning thyself abandoned by all?

                          20

Recall the paths you trod

And the place you now stand.

Never were you alien at all,

Never will the world drive you out;

Potencies grant still are in you, what

Time waits and look forward to

Daringly forward my dear,

The light will glare

And the passage never shut.

                          21

Salute to thee

The power that bestows solace

I shall never be the blockhead that

Sacrifice life,

Like the fly lured to lamp light

nor am I so bold.

Hesitate I not that the power

Leads me is thyself alone.

The shoots of my thoughts will sour high

Into the sky of the world,

Like an eagle that gyre unto heights

And blossom there as in a stellar chain

Never hath I ignored the paths I trod

And the place I have come at last.

The path trodden by this lonely tramp

Does lead indeed to the truth.

All my sojourns were pathed into truth

Never astrayed so far.

                               22

Seeker, it’s the point your wisdom reaches be

The real enigma today.

No clues are there to shackle you

Who is customed to utter the truth.

The riddle of today is

The truth that is vague or untruth...

The wheel of time will never revolve

Without counting the questioning wisdom of you

Why that disgust? Why those pains?

Forward my friend, forward.

                             23

Fearless my mind

Pose upright my head

My wisdom is not that could be

Confined to the wall of narrow mindedness.

From the abysmal shores of truth emerge

Words, spontaneous words

Exalted, thoughts sprouts galore.

My soul’s horizons are resplendent yet.

How adventitious

This go back to me again!

How incidental

The stream of the song from my self....