Passing Moments


Johannes Hohlenberg's Painting

A splendid painting I saw long ago

And the soul in it seemed to say,
That the heavenly gleam in those eyes

Watches over us night and day.

A soft breeze carried its perfume

And calm the deep sense of its songs;

A memory awoke of the past,

And crumbled the embodied wrongs.

From it an authentic voice surged, —

Like a great wave on a shoreless sea;

A new world is born, it proclaimed,

A world of love which is death-free.

Through the ages someone toiled,

To claim the flames of the sky,
There was the God's sacrifice

Willing the Will of the High.

He lit an intense gold-bright fire

And offered all life to the spirit;

From across solar widenesses

Came a wideness earth to win in it.

09/07/98 4:10PM

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Of the Mortal Lot


A dewdrop sat on a leaf

Drinking orange of the morn;

And sang, "In the mortal world

Someone is wishing to be born."

In the evening a glow-worm

Quivered at the garden-gate;

She said, "Among mortal creatures

Dearest to me is my gleamless mate."

A lonely star burned in the sky

Undaunted by the enormous night;

And said, "Of the mortal lot

I take care with my deathless light."

09/07/98 4:39 PM

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I am Trying to be...

I am trying to be like a lamp

That burns in a windless space,
Breathe a lonely joy of the sky

And my worldly griefs displace.

Therefore I stop casting shadows

And get ready to walk the way;

I hold in my heart, in its calm,

A tender flame, — with it to pray.

I may rise and fall, and know not

Where would the little barge drift,
But there is someone within me

Who tells how to receive the gift.

Flowers are perfumed, days bright,

And certainly weep I need no more;

Clouds come from the south-west

And on me the rains pour and pour.

O the marvel, a lamp made of clay

Singing to great love for its flame!
Will then not love come and stay

This worldly me for itself to claim?

10/07/98 3:45 PM

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Love's Leap


Up to the mountain ridge

Once a one-eyed doe strayed;

But there was a lonely hut

Where a lonely hunter stayed.


She could not see the valley

That deepened on her right;

But then felt an arrow whiz, —

She knew her mate in fright.


Swifter than death's weapon

She leaped beyond the cloud:

In a sky where burn stars of love

Doe-eyed souls to her bowed.


10/07/98 5:05 PM

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This Morning...


This morning in my tranquil vision I saw

A host of white peacocks dance in a forest;

The early rain glistened in the early light,

And forest trees and creepers were in it drest.


There was the happy peace, bright and true,

And true were the birds to their happy songs;

Colours of the sky spread everywhere

To gather which came happy angel throngs.


Sweetness was full and flowing like a river

Hasteningly ran for the calm sea in heaven;

From that cloister of peace, emerald holiness,

The Rishis who radiantly went up were seven.


Even as they reached that dazzling world

A golden-footed flame walked unto them;

Prized gifts of immortal things it gave, —

Undimming splendours of its realm.


But they wished one boon to be granted,

For the forest where the peacocks danced;

In that holy peace rose a sudden chant

Such indeed as again its holiness enhanced.


Athwart it speeded rapturous chariots,

Indra and Agni's, the Wind's, of the Sun-God;

And the wood buzzed in lucent peace,

And peace became their perfection's abode.


11/07/98 3:04 PM

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What Path of Wisdom...?

A blind man sat there alone,
In the lengthening shadow of a temple wall;

People who came to pray
At the temple told me he was the wisest of all.

I went and humbly asked him,

"O sage, what path of wisdom did you follow

Blind since birth as you are?

Sitting here the way to God you seem to know."

"Blindness gave me this sight,"
He said, "showed me this path to see the song;

I see God 0 where you are,
Even as would a deaf hear the loud temple gong.''

And the deaf man told me,
"O hear what the moon says, the stars, the sun;

I can swear as they hurry
They raise a chant in praise of the silent One."

11/07/98 9:25 PM

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God's Merit


I suffer no ache of nothingness,

And the sweet fragrance of flowers fills my air;

I have felt even in the tiniest bit

The same joy which of the mountains takes care.

A magic bird sits on a magic tree

And' a wandering cloud goes from sky to sky;

Palace halls dream in chandelier lights

And the dreaming huts do not dreamings belie.

O the world now that is not, will be!

But then I was having queer ideas about things;

The singer who lives within me

Is just mute, like music lacking the silver strings.

The waves are not hollow waves

And all these colours do not an illusion weave;

The boat that dances with the breeze

Is a floating house where beauty intends to live.

Nothing is strange, nothing untrue,

And everywhere present the same happy spirit;

Dissolve the self that is not self

And know the world's merit as God's own merit.

12/07/98 8:27 AM

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The Wind Blew from the South

The wind blew from the South
And carried soft fragrance of a dream;

And my wise heart fell asleep
Forgetting pride, forgetting self-esteem.

Grapes hung from the vines
And a sweetness dripped in earth's mouth;

Love was the love of God
Who came out from a shrine in the South.

The trees grieved no more
And flowering songs the birds gave to earth;

And in the suddenness
Of love came my soul to the world of birth.

The suns that long waited
Rode the chariots drawn by white horses;

Through bodies of truth
Immortal breath of life's joy now courses.

12/07/98 10:48 AM

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How Many?


"How many whelps you gave birth to?" —
To a lioness asked her forest friends.
"But a prince and with a princely mane,
In whose roar roar of the fire blends."

"How many colours make your bow?" —
Asked the white to the arc of the sky.
"The colour of joy is my favourite,
To see which you need a singular eye."

"How many shadows did you cast

When the pale moon drifted in the night?"

And the spirit replied to the boy,

"But then one yet stayed in the daylight."

"How many years from eternity

Did you take to fashion our time?"

"I forgot to count the hours," replied God;

"Lulled to sleep I was by your rhyme."

12/07/98 4:10PM

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New Birth


A new dawn came from a sky of peace

And the grasses stirred with the wind;

Mute Nature in it awoke and took a road

A song, a poem of happy tunes to find.

Sight became swift and astronomic,

And footfall of silence the ears heard;

Tranquil heart bore no anguish to beat

And needed was no thought, no word.

Faith grew pure and wide, spontaneous,

And knowledge poured from a high cloud;

Old death was no longer a prop for life,

Instead life only its perfect sense allowed.

Six times did the soundless bell ring

And six seasons speeded just in one hour;

Amber-hued was the breeze that came

Carrying the time-transcendent's power.

Spirit found a house to dwell in birth,

Not a gloomy rented place, lifeless room,
But a bright house for the stars to stay:

A flame was seeded in Matter's womb.

13/07/98 2:54 PM

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Alert Seeress


Monday morning just at 4 o'clock
I heard a sudden sound,
As though some impatient spirits
Were moving around.

"Give us our share," was their shout
From across the street;

"Our viand and our wine in red pots,
Our choicest treat."

No oil-lamp burned in the temple,
None slept in the yard;

The trusted watchman had gone home,
Leaving God himself to guard.

Alarmed, the seeress from her face
Tore the night's veil;

Compassionate eyes poured peace
Happy dawn to hail.

13/07/98 4:40 PM

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I Have Won...


I have won a deep silence

And in it I hear the sea's roar;

To me come dream-boats,

Dreams of the other shore.

A swift force of fire is set

Into motion and collapse
Crowded cities of the past,

Of sorrows too perhaps.

Whatever belonged to me

My habits, my feelings,
Songs, are now left behind,

All these quotidian dealings.

O the tongue of bright flame

For my fearless speech;

What a sacrifice is lit!

And it no death can reach.

Whatever my fondnesses,

Now the guests must exit;

Sacred emotions of love

To find in the loving spirit.

14/07/98 4:30 PM

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To Buy Shadows


Once on a road to Athens

Two poets met at the noon hour;

One praised hexametric gods,

The other his house and bower.

Two frogs croaked in a pond,

And said, "Queer the village folk.
We can be in and out of life

If only we know how to croak."

"I know your appetite's small,"

Said the Priestess to Reason;

"But go and wed White Passion

In this jolly holiday season."

On their way to the Ganges

Two hurrying streams met by a shrine;

For his holy dip will its old god,

They asked, join the pilgrim-line?

Word and Sense went to market

To buy a kilo of sweet potatoes;

But finding prices a bit too high

Just bargained for their shadows.

14/07/98 4:57 PM

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Heritage of Life


In search of a Red Rose I set out on a journey

And travelled along a stream, across hill and land;

I trod many seasons of grief and pain, of hunger,

And saw dreaming shadows walk hand in hand.

Maybe a few thousand years passed this way,

Of mythic wakefulness and of ancestral sleep;

And yet another thousand rose in a true answer

That in moods of silver-mauve I need not weep.

But all this must end like a comic, end forever, —

Wounds of heart, teardrops from foolish eyes;

The blackbird song, time-torture, must withdraw,

And make room for the Red Rose's enterprise.

The sages say the fields are rain-green, happy,

And the sky is blue and happy the gentle breeze;

Without danger you may soar like a little bird, —

Because the foundation of the world is in peace.

And the night is there for the stars to twinkle,

And the day for flaming hours to carry the gold;

True, quite true, there is death tied to the leg of life,

But the heritage of life is a joy unknown, untold.

15/07/98 8:35 AM

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When the Gods Laughed

Bill Clinton went to China

Befriending her old jiang Zemin;

They talked of booming trade

But chose to avoid Tiananmen.

Atalji sent a letter around

And his Pokhran justified;

"O Brahmin, and for what?"

From heaven the gods cried.

True, Zidane was their hero,—

But Ronaldo's stomach-ache?
Champs Elysees in revelry

Making football victory a fake.

Hussain thought it artistic,

To put on thick canvas a nude;

"Forgive him, he knows not;

Purity is past Hussainhood."

As usual the village potter

Was at work shaping his pots;

In the school when God saw

Children he had afterthoughts.

15/07/98 5:20 PM

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How Many Lives?


How many lives has death granted to me?

Nine lives, they say, a cat has — nine to die;

In the deeps of silence deeper than night

Nine dreams of loneliness nine times cry.

A sudden hue spreads goldening the morn,

And its joy weaves a white jasminean garland;

A sweet scented wind lifts up the early birds,

As if life has come a newness to understand.

Now from the alert edge of the sky arrives

Swift-footed destiny to prepare a bright day;

And all the sorrows that had Filled the past

Like mist just uncomplainingly fade away.

But then in gorgeousness of time to be born

The deepening depth of eternity awaits:

And so birth is escorted by death's shadow,

Death who has nine lives, to cross nine gates.

But death can cross the ninth gate only if

A sacrificial fire is kindled in the heart;

Then will the being be carried in a surge,

A great surge new divinity to body impart.

16/07/98 3:37 PM

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Where to Burn?


"Where to burn? How to burn?"
Asked the tender flame.
"Like a lamp? Like a forest fire
Fiery rapture to claim?"

"Is the night deep? occult enough?"
Asked the little star.
"Fathomless like space, fervescent,
Where galaxies are?"

"Where do I awake? Where sleep?"
Asked the golden dream.
"I can hold you, I can carry you,"
Answered the gleam.

"Can the pond contain me, will it?"
Asked the red lotus.
"Yes; its wish is one with your wish,
One and joyous."

"Will the Garden of the Giant smile?"

Asked the butterflies.

"See, the spring-children are coming

With souls in their eyes."

16/07/98 4:50 PM

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I Taste the Bliss


I taste the bliss of the sky,

I know the joy of the spring;

I have seen the orange peaks

Where the coloured birds sing.

Victories have come to me

As do leaves to the trees;

Thoughts of ants and stars

In my thoughts I seize.

A vastness grows in my heart •

And makes all emotions mine;

Whatever I will, whatever I do,

Time works out in that design.

I need not wrestle with shadows,

The meaning of death I grasp;

Subtle senses in me have awoken

The invisible presence to clasp.

From the calm fields of dream

Winds bring to me hopes of love;

And hopes are ardencies of faith

Born of soul in spirit to move.

17/07/98 10:10 AM

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World of Poetry


Sprinkle the colours,

Scatter many notes;

Morn and eve in them

Happy my poem floats.

Here and there you want

A bit of thought;

There and here wish

For some human plot, —

Betrayal of love,

A measure of pain,
In the cattle show

Tinge of cattle-bane.

What sense the words

If they do not sob?
Robbers of life they

The joys of life rob.

Oh you mean a life

Raw, bare, as it is;

Lizard chasing a moth,

Youth locked in kiss.

These shadow figures

Cast on a shadow wall,
Are but shadow thoughts

Of the Master of all.

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Dying day, dying night,

And a child weeping,
In other darknesses

All the stars sleeping,

Pale fleeting hours,

Grim moments of death,
And birth large-eyed

In the lack of faith,

A prophet gazing

Into dimness of space,
Hyena and crocodile

Each in its own place, —

But dismiss this all

If you wish to see
What really they are,—

In the world of poetry.

Swiftness of flame,

Sharpness of hue,
A suggestive mood

Is truer than the true.

Catch the subtle sound,

Greenness in the green, —
For poem of seer bird

Is poem of the unseen.

17/07/98 3:42 PM

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Behind the Eclipse


The moon arose in a scarlet-sky
And stood above the ancient ghoulish town;

The weaver was still at his loom
Weaving dreams which were dark-brown.

One went to the crowded bazaar

To buy a sword of sharp historic steel,

Trademark of murderous time

Who across ages held only sanguinary weal.

Between the warp and the woof
The second found for itself an inky place;

And then it made a gaudy cross
Which forebode for every dream disgrace.

Another chased a fleshy woman,
Her soul as if caught in a red cage of flesh;

And children she bore were shades
Of desire who yet these dreams immesh.

But rushed a swift dream-hound
And a full moon arose behind the eclipse;

Then came a white weaver-dream
With a dream in hand and a song on his lips.

That old weaver of yester-years,

Who had all life in tenuous dream of death

Threaded mysteries of hope,

Took it to weave in unphantomed breath.

18/07/98 5:03 PM "

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Apropos of a Poetry Journal

I turned the pages

Of an old old poetry journal;.
It was from a town

Celebrating the things vernal.

Rhymed were the verses

Written with the zeal of a sketch-pen;

But there were ardent songs

As at times are sung by lonely men.

And few were quite a surprise

Fashioned on a soundless route;

Their tunes carried emotions

To give speech even to the mute.

But in that small town

One day one witty poet sang,
With the tongue of a frog

And perfectly in frog-slang:

"But these worn-out words?

And for whom these old thoughts?
Drive them from your alleys,

All these old crumbling town-cots."

Now in these noisy lanes

Vendors sell their merchandise
To synthetic poets and frogs

As a neo-poetic enterprise.

18/07/98 6:05 PM

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Six Brahmins


Six Brahmins once went to the Forest Dweller

And humbly prayed for knowledge of the Eternal,
What he eats, how lives in beast and man and tree,

Begetter of creatures, manywise, and paternal.

Freedom he gives and our fates too fashions,

We take his wings and his bright roses smell;

Gigantic mountains and swift streaming rivers

Rush or stand about his great moods to tell.

Six mighty breaths he breathes in life and death,

Of these first five in the body and last in the sky;

Six worlds he has set up in them to take food,

Cooked in sun and household fires that never die.

He has put sight in the eye, word on the tongue,

That he may look into Matter and speak of it;

He broods on the Syllable and does sixfold work,

By abiding in work to ever abide in the Spirit.

Verses make his path and take him to earth, —

O to conquer for him these six mortalities!
Out of the unmanifest he conies into birth

And kindles gold flames to flame rapidities.

18/07/98 9:00 PM

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Time's Opuscule


Exists no move the house

That once held my pain and grief;

And I have left shadows behind,

Worldly joys that are brief.

Instead I hear deeper sounds

Coming from intimate solitude, —
Burdened with tranquil thoughts

Half-visible half-understood.

O the marvel! in my little garden

Gather flaming hues, grow flowers;

Their fragrance is gentle and true,

Smiles those of blossoming hours.

Inner infinities awake,

And one by one the radiant gods;

Arrival of the immortal birth

My heart applauds and applauds.

"What more be done, what more?"

Softly asks in its victory my soul;

To live a dream in embodied dream

Is wine-rapture of its dream-goal.

Maybe long ago I was surrounded

By animal wants and jealous men;

Unkindnesses had been my friends,

And ingratitude, and the other ten.

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Torture and sorrow, failure, defeat,

A ship tossed by the violent storm, —
That had been my fate all through,

That the opprobrium, the norm.

On thorny bushes of my days

Used to sit birds but without a song;

It was a helpless wistful sight,

Weary spectacle perhaps for too long.

A ghost would go from place to place

With coconut shells around its neck;

A string of horoscopes fashioned

Memories its dead self to bedeck.

I was alone, — in pain of sleep,

Hoodwinked by the dream-icons;

My thoughts bore black doubts,

My fondnesses a world of moans.

Hence my dauntless martyr spirit

Had cried: "For freedom I yearn,
Freedom from that deathful habit;

Yes! in me new fires must burn.

I cannot be fettered to passions,

Be bound to silly nothing's will,
My tale not an idiot tale of rounds,

Of a dull bullock tied to the mill.

I know why I have chosen to be

In the world though full of gloom;

The cave in which once I lived

Needn't remain an old cave of doom.

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Presently I set afloat at dusk

Clay-lamps on the stream of time;

And the currents carry them

To ocean-hush in hastening chime.

In my temple a thousand bells ring,

And a thousand eyes look at the One;

O the chants of many such worships,

All the rays turned towards the sun!

I see expectancy has to wake up

And surge like a flecked serpent, —
With a moon-jewel on its hood

That the appalling spell be spent.

Now my heart is a buoyant rush

To mystic seas which have no shore;

It deepens into its own emerald

As if its fervent depths to explore.

Its rapids are rapidities of fulgence,

And quietude welcome companion;

Charms of night, miracles of day

Through its many moods run and run.

Calm inner strength holds me up,

The way the gods the sky uphold;

Days have become my march,

Nights winsome, .faithful and bold.

I have kindled hopes everywhere

And each star is a fiery promise;

Wherever I look, whatever I touch

All indeed a largesse of wonder is.

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O the silent metaphor of life,

Glad traveller of eternity!
The sound of your feet echoes

Even before begins the journey.

Bring forth the soul of joy,

And bright flowers of the spring;

The wind will be soft and scented,

Sweet on trees the birds will sing.

The rivers will swell allwhere,

And happy flames to sky ascend;

Whatever ought to be true will be,

And the gods' long anguish end."

But there was a nobler martyrdom,

Luminous, godly, greater than mine;

It threw itself into a splendid fire

And blazed in that realness's sign.

It gathered its many riches,

Infinity piling gold upon infinity;

Held all that back from its sight

To discover some other divinity.

Out of its unknowable self

It made room for the vast night to be,
Lighted surprises of the stars

In creative dazzle of its ecstasy.

On a speedy stream it set

Amazement of a universe afloat;

Gladly in that silver rush

Sailed time's spirit,— like a little boat.

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Emerald-blue of the waters

Made furrows of red and gold;

Along its widening banks

Flourished a mystery that is sevenfold.

A godhead came upon earth

Keeping aside the glory of his past;

Left deathless life behind

His crimson seeds in death to cast.

Persuading his soul to woo

Forbidding horror of dubious fate,
Of falsehood in all things,

He crashed into the dim cheerless gate.

There is a wisdom pure and vast

Of yore in white blaze of the sun;

A world-heart beats in world-thrill

And in every heart is its love won.

In the silence of his spirit

A defeatless force is ever at work;

In the bright triumph of his joy

No evil can lie, no suffering lurk.

A might holding many mights,

And opulence of the triple name,
Chose to walk in human steps

For the Almighty hilltop-shrine to claim.

In magnificence of his intent

To build a house for the Unborn,
Of his self made a sacrifice which

Tall and tongueless flames adorn.

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Alone in wideness of God

He lived God's august work to do;

Immeasurable silence witnessed

In Matter's womb birth of the true.

Even his body's cells shone

As if countless suns were lit;

The Transcendent's power he housed

Where purple majesties sit.

To him thoughts came in serene

Intuitions from the original fount;

Calm words he spoke were words

That had strength death to surmount.

Truth's abidingness he firmed

In mortality's devious ways,—
Made his breast a diamond cup

To hold its bliss, its rain and rays.

Nightly aeons had elapsed

For the days of all-love to dawn;

Now in its great resplendence

The wonder of wonders moves on.

Mortal birth he lifted to the sun

And the Will of the High in it willed;

A presence leaned down and things

Promised long ago are fulfilled.

18/08/98 2:58 PM

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