Night Swan- A song of innocence

Night Swan, Night Swan
Fair and Lovely white
Perched atop the verandah
Where eager steps alight
When in your little pond
You quack and invite
Bird-watchers, nature-lovers
who in your down feathers delight

Strutting about,
Dancing your dances
In winter, rain or hail
Coquettish, vain
You avail
Compliments, admiration
From the whole mail

But
Night Swan, Night Swan
You forget,
Like other swans
You never took your pair
With enthusiasts many
But true-bird none
To you no one
Owes any real debt
and you never laid
any chicks e’en

Have you ever thought,
When cocks near you
You have none,
In you no longer
They find any fun
where from this palace top
Shall you alight?

Where brood till the day,
The world from you,
And you to the world,
Pass forever out of sight?

Afternoon
February 7, 2008

Unititled

When you opened the box,
O Pandora,
They say you let It go

Check its depths once again
I think they are mistaken

Ignore Donne, Death and Be Proud!

O Death be proud
Thou dost not die
You do live
With those whose kin you spy
Or have already abducted
Or on whom you stalk
Daily it is you
Who, with me, walk
It is you I see all around
In every moan and every sound
The screech is yours is the piercing scream
The burning pyres, still graves, flowing ashes in gushing streams
All things bloom only to wilt
All marry life so Consummatum est! / (it is finished!)

March 3, around 10 pm

They Have Dried Up

It is true,
indeed, she’d never been mine,
yet,
somehow did for me
what Bhagirath,
long back in time.

It had really flowed
each day, each night, each hour
every minute
quenching prosaic fields,
where I reaped rich,
blossoming fragrant flowers by the side,
with me as constant gardener,
sometimes little pansies of a few lines
purple
once a huge chrysanthemum,
a mellow yellow
another time, a lily- white
fragmenting which I’d play
“she loves me, or does not”

I have tried to build dams
to always gain control
to use to my advantage
channelise the flow
but ’twas its own master
rather I the thrall
not it at mine
but I at beck and call

Omnipresent, Omnipotent
it was my new God
this new Brahmaputra, this new Amazon

But then one day
it changed its course
began rubbing its sides
causing breaks in banks

I ran about frantic
to do best as I could,
but it was as if Thetis
I not half The Man.

What could I do as it fled away?
untie-able, nobody’s prey

It has left behind,
in its wake, just one lingering life
very desolate,
all my companions- my breathing words, my flowers
They have dried up!
as I now create
these with paper
origam-ous ones, that do not live
no smells exude.


3rd March 2008
12:10 PM, quite soon after waking up.

An Acrostic

Jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, jugging
Understanding or trying to understand
Society, myself, poetry and writing
Trying to figure out the nature of man

Feel like penning something down
Enlightening, foolish, fermenting furores
Encrypting etymologies, unleashing new sounds
Latching to words anew, to get around

Life itself, limericking lampoons
Intense satires, making buffoons
Knowing the unknowability of all
Embattling staleness, to clichés maul

With nothing I own truly mine
Rusty, used language
I am trying to define
Things my own way, a tradition find
I can call my own, to
None owe allegiance
Good, bad or of mediocre kind

Alas, ‘tis not easy to disown

Poets, stalwarts, giants who seem, to
Own all ways to speak, say, scream
Encaptured the word, leaving
Me obsolete, just to sit, and to mope and moan.

22 February around 8 PM

An Ode to Kilimanjaro

An Ode to
Kilimanjaro

What joy
in Everest, in K2,
mounts of this kind
when they merely build on
peaks around, the gradual incline?

O
Kilimanjaro
Thou massif supreme
Who rise head and shoulders
Above the Savannah surrounding
With wildebeest grazing golden greens
At your feet; rising up through woolly clouds
To heights ice covered, at Equator nature’s oxymoron

Making
Viewers giddy
With a sense sublime
Towering over the Black
Lording in your pristine White
The truest of nature, not a self-
Proclaimed Superior Foreign Light.

Your
Naked
Individuality
All glory your own
You need no PR, No
ladders on which to climb
Smacking of arrogance from
Your Solitary Throne, you do not
Conform, you are not conditioned
You rise, You rise; Your rise oblivious
Of the rest, you stare the Andes, Atlas, Alps and
Himalaya in their eyes, you see your own visions all alone
For you, O greater than Helicon and Vesuvius, the poets mind
Unique inspirations, sights, your own new kens, your own paradigms


7th of February, in the class after the Wordsworth one, where his encounter in the Prelude with trailing peaks was discussed.

POETRY SYMPOSIUM

POETRY SYMPOSIUM
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI SOUTH CAMPUS
Benito juarez road, new delhi 110021

Tuesday, 19TH FEBRUARY 2008
s.p. jain auditorium

PROGRAMME

9.30 AM Registration

10.00 AM INAUGURAL ADDRESS:

PROF. Dinesh Singh,
Director, South Campus

SESSION 1:SOUNDS OF POETRY: READINGS
Malashri Lal (Chairperson)
Shiva Prakash
Keki N. DaruwaLla
Sukrita Paul Kumar
J P Das
Rukmini Bhaya Nair

11,15 TEA

11.30 SESSION 2 :
POETRY and TRANSLATION: PANEL DISCUSSION
ASHOK VAJPEYI (CHAIRPERSON)
SHIRSHENDU CHAKRAVARTI,
K. SATCHIDANANDAN

ANAMIKA

12.30 PM NEW VOICES IN POETRY
SUDEEP SEN (Chairperson)
RONID KR.
SABITHA TP
ANIL GURTOO
ARUNI KASHYAP
MAAZ BIN BILAL

SANJAY KAUSHAL

1.30 LUNCH

2.30 SESSION 3:
PERFORMATIVE POETRY
Vivek Narayanan
Mahmood Farooqui & Danish Husain
Madan Gopal Singh

04.15 VOTE OF THANKS :
NIRMALYA SAMANTA

TEA