Blessing

When a leisurely search for a lost paper

Gets underway in the house

You can depend on me to find it

The books kept for display 

In the hall are where the hunt begins

And where it founders for they contain

Plenty of distractions between their leaves:

A post-dated cheque a borrower gave me 

With a request not to encash it till he cleared it

Still sits snugly in the pages of Hamlet;

What piques me again is

A newspaper cutting about a bestseller

That reveals the secret of talking about authors

You have not read or do not want to even under threat;

The best memento is a New Year greetings card

From years ago from a departed mentor

With a heartfelt blessing written in ink:

May you find what you are looking for.

Arrived

The mind has no longer any desire

To be anywhere else for it has seen

The futility of its frenetic travels

I'll not trade the quiet of the night

For even Bach on the cello

This coming home is a coming back

Not going back to a native land

Where the dreams swirl in the dust

And the temple answers no prayers

The room seems bigger than it is

The furniture don't seem in the way

Who smiles back in the almirah mirror

Is someone who has arrived, at last

Unbearable

The December night seeps into the concrete house

Through every pore and turns the walls,

Metal and wood and cloth icy to the touch

The blanket cannot keep out the weather

Still reeling in the bay storm's insane trail

When the ceiling fans are switched off 

A new silence full of unheard sounds prevails

The ear chooses to recall a familiar noise

To shut out the scrapes, scratches, voices

Too much quiet is not bearable even scary

Like when the mind goes blank for a while

And you want to call back a memory 

A song, a face, a number that reassures

You have not strayed into the dark unknown

Seen unseen

I wake up to the poet whispering

In my ear that all places are the same

Because they disappear all the same

No one is a stranger to sorrow and so

Kindred in suffering and transience

Look at the river that seeks the depths

Sings as it flows towards death

How can stepping into one wash sins away

The hill god enters the Vaigai, walks away

Every year in a reenactment of the myth,

That both segues and separates

Have you ever been inside such a crowd

Felt your face vanish into the many faces

Got swept away by the swell of oneness ----

The drumbeats still reverberate

In the heart like a visceral rhythm

When the haze lifts the seen is unseen.

Peace

A river is reborn when it floods

Human sorrow lessens everytime

Someone cries and is comforted

Happiness fills the heart 

When comparisons cease

Devotees tire of their gods

Find new ones to praise

The old ones used to adulation

Die slowly of starvation

One who knows what fame is

Is wary of it though it comes unbidden

Remembers the freedom of anonymity

When time casts him aside like a plaything

Let peace come before night falls.

Quotable quotes

It is love that makes a doll live

Curiosity pushes a child forward

Faith turns stone to god

White clouds are beautiful

Only the dark ones bring rain

Sweeter than silence itself

The hare and the tortoise

Live their lives at their own pace

It's man that pits them in a race

Mythology cannot become history

Even if textbook lessons are written of

Incarcerated leaders flying out on bulbuls

To visit their motherland across the sea

Yesterday's truth is today's falsehood

Light can now be both a particle and a wave

Gravity cannot keep us bound to earth.

Dragonflies

 The sun stirring out after

Two days of relentless rain 

Seems to have softened up 

After all the hours of hiding

I stretch my hands to catch

Its yellow glow on the skin

To soak up the nutrition 

That doesn't have to be paid for

The dragonflies too are out 

Too many to be counted

Hovering two storeys high

Their wings glinting in the light 

What is there to wish upon them?

When the sky gives when it has to

What else is there to wish for?