Time

The old man on the park bench

Mutters to himself something

He has read or heard somewhere:

It is easier to forget

Than be forgotten;

Time flies when young.

The green peacocks

That cannot fly

Turn red in season;

Time moves in various colours.

The parrots cannot be still or quiet

They screech from tree to tree

Seem always in a hurry;

Time is frenetic around them.

The funeral procession 

Pauses every now and then

To set off serial crackers

What are they celebrating

But the death of time.

Full moon

In the morning there is little trace

Of the night that put you to sleep

And lulled the mind with dreams

The slant shadows the sun causes

Trail you till they subside in darkness

Fear of transience darkens pleasure 

Every morsel has the shadow of the past

When hunger was a feared beast

The flames of the sacrificial fire

Cry for more than ghee and grain

They have tasted sacred flesh before 

To the invocations of the war god

The ones who wanted to enter portals

Not meant for everyone have perished

In fiery ways celebrated as divine union

Let the full moon bloom in every dark sky

Make everyone look up, learn to ask why.

Two dreams

There are two dreams

One we wake up from

One we cannot as it is

Too real to be unreal

The hunger singes

Till it is appeased

Again and again

The house is so big

It cannot be left behind

The wardrobe overflows

With clothes never worn

More than once or ever

For they turn out to be

Not what we wanted

There is another dream

That will not let us sleep

For we think it is our destiny

The purpose of our life

When life all around us

Shows it has no reason.

What is a dream worth

If it will not change reality

For those who cannot dream?

Water birds

Tomorrow is too far away

To even think of arriving

Today is what we want 

To leave far behind

Like we did yesterday

What was that dream

We can't remember

Like a previous life

Some insist we had

And we will have again

The actor says he invites

The characters he plays

For they are waiting

To come alive in him

Thoughts don't die

They only hide from us

We cannot be what we are

When we have been raised

To be what we have to be 

The pond is drying up

But we cannot desert it

Like the water birds do

The rains cannot but arrive.

Distances

This is the land of vast distances

Between deity and devotee

Language and prayer

Aspiration and arrival

This is the land of the lost

Those who have no roots

Forgotten where they are from

Named by others and called names

Yet this land is now coming to itself

For the earth and sea

Are now giving up their dead

Who tell the truth to their heirs

Of how the distances came to be.

Fallen awaken

The bird is back with its song

Though it cannot build a nest

It cannot let go of summer

Give love rest for a year or two

Life cannot wake up quietly

Like the sun does every day

The moon does when it rises

The stars when they come on

The words look at truth silently

Cannot describe what they see

For what is said is not what is seen

The world vanishes without desire

The fallen laugh for they have woken

Light cannot be nailed to the cross

Love that is buried is resurrected 

Hatred is shamed and goes into hiding.

Momentous

We have parted ways with time

Or time has parted ways with us

For the seasons here don't change

As if we had willingly foregone springs

Settled for yearlong, dark, cold winters

We did not ask for the certainty of slavery

To replace the uncertainty of freedom

This day looks like other days when

The destination is only vaguely known

And there is no one to ask where it is

Because it is not clear what it looks like

This moment when you do not know

Where you want to go, this moment

When you do not want to go anywhere

This moment when there is no distance

Between yesterday and tomorrow or

Between you and me, this moment

Is the moment is the momentous moment.

Empty walls

A kite and a crow's nest

Are almost all that remain

On the peepul's branches

Before the new leaves arrive

So much of the blue sky

Can now be seen behind it

But the bareness of the tree

Is like the vast empty walls

Of a house you just moved into

Before memories can be mounted

As if touched by this thought

A passerby who has found out

About his own transience

Returns to stand barehearted 

Before the bareheaded giant

Asking why man cannot stay.

Eyes

The eyes cannot stop seeing

Even when it is time to sleep

Cannot let go of the scenes

Seen through the day's travel

The trees flow past in rows

Sometimes with flowers

Sometimes wearing none

Greenery is never tiresome

Impatient colours join in

Want to be seen all together

That we can't tell which is which

One shade from the other

The hills cannot be left behind

Come dancing around us

Asking how they look now

When blue they were from far

The lure of heaven is in its distance

What is easily had is evanescence

Summer

 March is the month of falling leaves

When trees shed the old for the new

With the sun ending its unilateral truce 

And renewing its hostilities in a new year

It's war again in every exam-bound school 

As teachers marshal their students for

The final do-or-die battle that will decide

Whether they will get educational nirvana

On the streets the primal struggle goes on

The vendors of water melons are back

Their tricycles parked at vantage corners

The pink slices make the thirsty thirstier

The earth and sea cannot bear to see

The people suffer, soon whip up clouds

That set the heat-cold cycle in play again

Summer comes but trailing monsoon rain.

Seeing no evil

 With my new glasses I felt I had new eyes

I stopped to read signboards on the way

As enthused as would be a newly literate

The old letters seemed freshly painted

Though the odd word was spelt wrong

Even mistakes did not look out of place

All women were beautiful with ear-rings

As huge as wall hangings or festoons

Their hair bands matching their clothes

The messages on the backs of autos

Highlighting the virtue of work or faith

Were as legible as their number plates

If the vision continued to be as good as this

Jiddu's observation without thought

Could be as easy as breathing in and out

Or seeing no evil when the eyes don't doubt.

Homemaker

The night is full of regrets

That sleep makes us forget

The day comes back with hope

Leaves us little time to mope

The house is often like a child

Tending towards the wild

Things not put in their place

Can find ways to hide

As long as the hands are busy

The mind takes it easy

The feet clock miles without

Having hardly stepped out

The chores keep at us

Like waves that never rest

Maybe more is in store

That I not know of as yet

The sun sets with a sigh

That quietens the sky

Till the hunter turns in 

The lights will be burning

To be alone with the past

Is to mourn the lost

Whom sleep brings to life

In dreams where lines are crossed.

Premonition

We dream of those we want to see

Of places where we want to be

What is this train we are regularly late for

This maths exam we are never ready for

Sometimes the faces are of strangers

Are they one or made from many

Who passed us on our way day to day

But to whom we had little to say

If dreams are often life-like

What of those real-life occurrences

That can only be called dream-like

That night when we were about to sleep

I clearly heard my brother call my name

The voice came from the backdoor

What was he doing there at this hour

When he was supposed to be at home

Five hundred miles west from here

No one was seen when we went to look

The telegram soon followed of his death

After being falsely accused of theft by father

I still think he came to bid farewell to his sister

Even if no one knows if we live thereafter.

The last one

In the class the blackboard

Turns silent when wiped clean

The children pretend to be quiet

With their eyes talking to one another

The teacher battles to shepherd minds

That wander over imaginary pastures

To be in the moment is hardly learnt

Till the last moments are upon us

Dying is nothing new as the poet said

Do we remember the deaths before death?

The time when we lost what we thought we had?

The child we could not be for long?

The native city we had to walk away from

Though the past came running after us crying?

As life moves from one death to another

The last one is like the ones that came before.

Cacophony

 The drunkard sleeping under

The tree he thinks he owns

Because he sleeps there

Protests the birdsong

That wakes him early

I have heard him quarrel

Before with his past

In a particular order

The wife he left because

She wanted money all the time

The friend who owes him 

And refuses to pay back

The enemy who thrashed him

When he was unprepared

And has it coming soon;

This is something new

Complaining of the clamour

From the newborn crow chicks

Impatient for their first feeding;

"Can't you let a poor man sleep

When he has to drink to do that

Do you know what the prices are

Am I stealing this stuff off the street

Like you do for building your nest

If you keep up this racket every morning

I am going to come for you with a gun."

I too talk to the crows when alone

Like a child confiding to his toys.

The tippler pours himself a hangover fix

Targets the original sinner again

And finally goes back like Caliban to his dream. 

First loss

This crow is flying about

With its own feather in its beak

Much like me holding on to my 

First milk tooth when it fell

And trying to put it back fearing

The ridicule of peers

I had seen being ridiculed;

It was a rite of passage

To cope with the first loss

To get it soon buried

In the backyard

Helped by mother

With a generous sprinkling of milk;

Mother has now become a framed photo

Quietly receiving her monthly oblations

So has father who consoled me

With the fact that teeth for grown-ups

Replace the ones we lose;

Every memory is a memory of loss

Of what we lost and what we have not.

Silence

Look at the silence

Of the sky

When it darkens

Before rain

Listen to night fall

Over the city

Fighting darkness

With its lights

How can we go home

If our work is not done

...

The parrot's feather,

I picked up on the terrace 

During my evening walk,

Was green and white with

Maybe a touch of blue

From affinity for the sky,

I kept it for a while in my hand

Wishing I could fly into the night

And be remembered as someone

Who vanished as he wished.

...

Silence is taught

In corporate ashrams

If it can be paid for

Sometimes with life

Someone's silence 

Can be bought

If cost is naught

What happened

To the silence

We fought in school

That we soon learnt to

Turn off and on

It is a deafening silence

When the falsehood is brazen

When the godman speaks

Truth falls silent.