the relentless poet

with high sugar, bp and other physical plights

the poet writes

through the dysfunctional ears, myopic eyes

the poet types

in an armchair, with a stick that wobbles

the poet scribbles

with wilting legs, quivering hands

the poet dares to stand

despite migraine and toothache, the poet giggles

the words on those pages scrawl, squiggle

despite wars in the air

in every corner

stony tones that joke and smirk

the jerk, with the restless mind

writes

what drives the poet, no one knows

would the poems anywhere go

to the insane, matters the least

out in the sun or in foggy mist

drying, drizzling, or pouring

tools aiding or ailing

the writing continues

of the sighs and the hues

in the world around

with the spirit of wonder

yet untapped, unbound

the broken rhythm

 

in the world, there's only this slow, stress-less pace

the muddy heart, water-beats of peace

no race, no dolour, none at all

quiet, sound is the world, authentic, every moment

no bloodshed, brawl

life abounds in the air, replete with existence

yet

essence picks up images of horror, scarcity

nurses, nurtures, mirrors nature-less discords

as insipid truth

hollowness intrudes,

a stranger with an unwholesome passport

marks boundaries in horizon-less minds

breaks into lies, with wide open eyes

a lilt fast, hurried, abrupt...a cadence queer,

disquieting still

the tuning back into the pristine...

the attractive, abounding whole

could journey its way

through cleansing the lot

wishing away

outlandish thoughts.

Pervert

Water boiling... morning tea in the making

My east-facing kitchen and my bedroom get the morning sun

My wife also suggested a glass door in the balcony

From where comes every morning the soft sun

My wife, asleep... half of her body is sun’s

The rest, shadow’s...my world looks beautiful, complete

I smell her hair, my black nest

She’s my married wife ... Married wife? What kind of an expression is that!

I am standing...looking empty and hollow...am I a pervert?

Suddenly a rage ran through my nerves

Desdemona! What on earth are you doing with him? O, that’s why the glass, is it?

Wait...kill him I will... I pull the heavy curtain

She takes the quilt and embraces it inside her

O the quilt, the bed sheet, the pillows

All seem like scattered handkerchiefs... Desdemona! Am I a pervert?

‘Hon, where’s the tea?’

Just a minute darling... about turn...the mirror traps me in horror

I rush to the kitchen. Boy! The sun has washed all the water away

‘Honey...where’s my tea?’I know a full honey is not so sweet.

A wind blows through the leaves of the tree that my kitchen covers

The one we planted some years ago. Honey!

Just a minute love! No, no... I am not going there until the tea is done

Through the breezy branches, the sun winks at me sniggering in the roaring chirps

‘Pervert’!

we can do without weapons

This poem is in response to the most alarming screech ‘I will shoot you’ by a child in a school. Where it happened is not important, because it happened in my world, your world, our world.

‘I will shoot you’, a child says to another child.

The trigger pulls, the child kills and is killed.

Children reflect grown up children’s wild burden,

Destined to hate, hit, and hurt with the excuse of a reason.

Ye civilized world, worthy women and men!

Did you hear the sound, the alarm, the screeching siren?

If this doesn't trigger to lock out weapon factories

and convert them into flower-houses, then what would,

my dears,

with how much more bloody tears?

What is your fear to do away with those

think anew

you need to,

put an end to these shows.

Weapons are free, and they’re on the loose

Children o heavens be; let them play, amuse.

Drop those hoity-toity toys
For the sake of those budding girls and boys

Children are shooting stars,

weighed down, heavy, with our sad scars,

change your mindless, reckless game,

help them shoot out love, without guilt or shame.

Eons of years have gone by,

failures of primitive outcry

attraction still is to repeat,

humankind’s utter defeat.

Think afresh and choose

a weapon-less winsome place

the world will win its space

none will ever lose.

Dive in deep to know

its useless disastrous root

the need for weapons would go

children, all ages, would never ever shoot.

join the world

Weapons are injurious

to the health of the world

Ban the need for weapons

from the beautiful minds

Wonder in the oil canvas

Lucky smiles....

Hamlet and Romeo

have come to join Didi and Gogo

under the tree.

A song...

 ‘Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,’

Portia looks at lady Macbeth’s hands

just arrived,

they look at the new entrants and courtesy.

Portia tries to listen to the song...

‘Noh’, she says, ‘it’s far from a greenwood tree

in the middle of a desert deforested...

fiction is overpowering reality

this is not true, not real

what preposterous impertinence

it doesn’t in the least, make any sense’.

She concentrates on those pardon-seeking hands

counting numbers in fingers!

Suddenly they all see

Joan of Arc, Emma, Elisa Doolittle

in the team,

how horrid

for they do see

Shylock, Hitler, Black Peter, Peter Pan...

the children which took away the Pied Piper

all playing in the never-to-be-lost field

unworried.

With them, are those two famous shepherds

there is no cattle though, no herd

the lover boys look so much the same, are they twins!

Only the hands of Van Gogh know

zoom...splash...screech...

in the chaos, characters statue...

their eyes getting bigger and bigger

they see a hollow

in those helping pairs of hands

amidst a clutter of sand...

they finally look at the world

... a zero land...

And in there they see

All the other characters

Victims and victors once

Now holding hands

Synergised with fusion

Floating around

In the oily canvas

Amol* is fascinated, as always

Spoke to these newfound strange travellers or passers-by

about the King’s arrival

Doesn’t understand what on earth

In the tableau happened, or is still happening

He only wonders, never questions, not any more

He’s thus destined, created through sense

With an out-of-the-world confusion

(Looks at Lucky and says)

I am in between

Could it be that or this

If ever I have to ask

I know there’s always my Sudha*

Lucky smiles

(Amol covers himself with the quilt...Olympus moves...hooosh... he goes to sleep, is sure to meet the king tomorrow... he found her Sudha in all the characters in the tableau... she will surely bring him flowers and he won’t die...he chuckles

“Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish fond old (child),

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;

And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.”)

Note:

I must admit that this poem comes from a failed attempt of writing an inter-textual play. In the play I wrote, or tried to write, there were these characters from very popular plays belonging to different literary movements; viz. classicism to existentialism, talking to each other from their own fixed, created positions. I found it difficult to continue and, therefore, have scrapped it, or should I say shelved it. The theme behind this inter-textual nonsense was to bring out the sickness from society and banish the disease once and for all.

About Amol and Sudha

There are only two characters Amol and Sudha, which many readers, especially those outside of Bengal or of India, wouldn’t know. These two characters have been created by Tagore in the play ‘Dakghar’ or ‘Post Office’.   

Summary

The Post Office (Bengali: Dak Ghar) is a 1912 play by Rabindranath Tagore. It concerns Amol, a child confined to his adopted uncle's home by an incurable disease. W. Andrew Robinson and Krishna Dutta note that the play continues to occupy a special place in Tagore's reputation, both within Bengal and in the wider world. It was written in four days.

Amol stands in Madhav's courtyard and talks to passers-by, and asks in particular about the places they go. The construction of a new post office nearby prompts the imaginative Amol to fantasize about receiving a letter from the King or being his postman. The village headman mocks Amol, and pretends the illiterate child has received a letter from the king promising that his royal physician will come to attend him. The physician really does come, with a herald to announce the imminent arrival of the king; Amol, however, dies as Sudha comes to bring him flowers.

W.B. Yeats was the first person to produce an English-language version of the play; he also wrote a preface to it. It was performed in English for the first time in 1913 by the Irish Theatre in London with Tagore himself in the attendance. The Bengali original was staged in Calcutta in 1917. It had a successful run in Germany with 105 performances and its themes of liberation from captivity and zest for life resonated in its performances in concentration camps where it was staged during World War II. Juan Ramón Jiménez translated it into Spanish; it was translated into French by André Gide and read on the radio the night before Paris fell to the Nazis. A Polish version was performed under the supervision of Janusz Korczak in the Warsaw ghetto.

Here’s to health

Stop! Don't binge on 'past' food.

An indulgence that attracts and destroys

the system from within,

the only self-medication, with breath as guru*

is meditation; rest, injurious.

If you want to laugh aloud,

take all your violence out,

or want to stimulate your gray matter

look for none, but nature

just look... look at her.

The shameless butterflies and bees with those flowers

Brooks with those grasses, leaves and the trees

Birds with those fruits

Cattle with those barks and the meadows

O boy! What they do! All through the day!

With love in the air, all creatures, timid and brave

from elephants to ants

will oust your gray, the giggle-waves

and pleasure-rains streaming through the nerve
O it doesn't in the least matter
Which age-traveller you are

Watch! It can even wet your pants!

Practise this for some time till you feel

light. ...  almost feather-weight

when you’re up and about

in the beautiful merry-go-round

you’ll see your reflections,

...all around...

Go! Say hello to the world.

*guru - teacher; the word has two parts, viz. 'gu' and 'ru'...'gu' means obfuscation or darkness and 'ru' means the person who helps clear the darkness

The world speaks

I am the world,

A prosaic plot.

While rhymes, as I speak

or write in your hearts

could go groping for words

Let me see if my thoughts

That seek energies from your beats

would be legible enough.

My leaves and my grasses tremble in fear

Shivering foams whisper

Scared, wonder

Will at all

The visible divides from the minds

disappear?

I wish I were a little coddled.

Without skirmish, feuds of bruises, scratches

Human beings, the most intelligent

Hurting me with powerful weapons

Powerless, weak, primitive still

They appear rough.

I wish

They sat together

Anywhere

On the mountains, hilltops,

rivers, oceans

And discussed...

How to function without weapons

The reason to fight in the jungles

Is so strong, stubborn

But today!

Of what use are they

I am theirs, all theirs, anyway

I will be there, as it were,

All along, all the way!

Silly,

To focus willy-nilly

Outside of me

Sorry, I am plenty

To their urge for poverty

I can never gift them scarcity.

(The look shifts...pouring with affection... the dawn breaks...with brooks, waves and dewdrops, the world now directly talks)

Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania

You divided me first into continents

Then into countries, cities

Regions, languages, religions, dogmas, faiths

With each divide you still host and adorn,

A weapon is reborn

Its reflection comes to you

in various types and forms.

How many weapons would you have right now? Right here!

Do you have any account, any number?

From your indulgent slumber,

Won’t you ever wake up, my dears!

In the factories where they are produced

Invent something else that will not abuse

Me, my worth and my wealth

I wish you happiness, peace and health.

I want rich countries to remain rich,

Let wealth for the poor come within their reach...

How

This is what!

This is what you need to think and engage

I am abundant and endless

Think anew; think afresh,

for my sake, for my sake!

You worship gods, but devils you hold dear

Whom you respect you keep afar

Whom you follow, you yourselves dread and fear.

Take my word

Look at me, please

I am the only visible boon from your God.

Weapons are countless, a weeping stock

Built, invented with honesty and sincerity to kill

Drop those objects in my oceans.

Or better still

With all of them,

You can build a country

A new skill, it’s a new skill!

The slaughter pieces will shelter

A memento, will it be, a reminder.

Build it with the same vim and vigour

An iron place

for the tired and the fatigued in them

Don’t know if I’m planting a seed here,

Speaking to you,

or just writing a poem.

I plant this thought – to function weapon-less

Yes, weapon-less

Our only pride, only growth

True mark of progress

To be able to function weapon-less

It is possible, it is time now, give me your word

Try it for a change, in medias res

I am all you have, focus!

I am your world.

(The look shifts...affection unbound... the world now speaks, all around...)

Let them

Let them look at the shivering leaves and grasses

The whispering foams trembling on the beaches

Released, unafraid

Let them look!

They are my new goose bumps

On thinking how pampered will I be!

When on this very stage, at long last

A new drama will begin

Through the winsome heartbeats!

A world anthem will sing

When weapons and guns

Would belong to the past

They’d cease to be used in me

Fish out of water

In the garden-pond...

World peace days,

Angry peace organisations,

Big fish

peace, a small fry

out of water

Immortal air

Immortal air

Dead in the flute

Lying on the ground

Once, many tunes were born

Wrote stories of angels,

From the gaps of gasping breaths

Painted pictures, in the whistling air

Entertained rivers floating through the nerves

Its intercourse with fingers melted snows and stones.

Now, those feelers no longer

Give a hand to the dancing air; they have left

Leaving the flute as a mere instrument

They are now occupied, engaged

To craft and build structures of a different bent

Mud has choked the flute.

No room, no space inside; to flirt, caress

Even from close

It looks like a stick, made of stone

Ready for a new role

Outcast air urges the leaves to fall

And cover its mate.

Lying on the ground

Dead in the flute

Immortal air