On a hot languorous Sunday afternoon
The nymph trembled under his touch
The finish of a half-formed symmetry
Was irritating and hurtful to the senses
See the crazy rebellious asymmetry
And the absurdity of the underlying ideation.
In fact, a different she had taken birth
In the anarchic aggregation of the artist’s mind
The wood is wieldy and the mind meandering
Everything changed [...]
Archive for January, 2005
29 Jan
The wooden nymph
28 Jan
Poetry comes
Fleeting reflections and evocative images
Strike like moths in the first rains
At the dead of the night, they embrace
Their shadows on the frosted glass
The window –sill is carpeted with wings
The garden walk is strewn with
Innumerable carcasses of one-day glory
Where were the creatures the last season ?
Then the weather was warm and oppressive
It was only towards the [...]
27 Jan
The elephant-God
Before the onset of winter
Our dear elephant-God arrived
The beginningless God presided
Over every worldly beginning
Rising from the mud-peelings
Of our own Magnificent Mother
He laughed at the annoying
Asymmetry of the imperfect world
The moon mocked at his belly
That rocked with food and laughter.
The crowds cheered their clay-God
Painted in kitschy acrylic colours
And national pride was restored
Amidst cacophonous film music.
24 Jan
Jaws
We ruminate here , in this space,
With our highly flexible lower jaws
Making vigorous elliptical movements
A soft morning sun calls us out
From behind the General Post Office
A dark child , naked and shy,
Laughs from the ripples of the pond
“Cracker !”, shouts the girl in English
To the utterly lovable Great Dane
Who sniffs busily at the roots
Of the [...]
17 Jan
The shadow
First the silence of the hills
Echoed in my closed ears
As if they existed outside of me
The tall casuarinas called out
Yet remained chillingly silent
The valleys dripped with mist
The mountains lay noiselessly
Stacked one upon another
The eagle broke their silence
A shadowy figure smiled at me
Through the morning’s silence
These trees became gnarled
The salt had blackened their leaves
From out of [...]
14 Jan
Phantoms
That night unhappiness struck
As phantoms of past hurts
Knocked at my midnight
At the unlit corner where
Awareness took a blind turn
I tried to think tall cedars
And tiny violet flowers
Strewn on the garden path
Sundials with quick hands
Full-grown Great Danes
Chasing winter shadows
Then my morning came soon
In the aura of the glass-house
And the luminescent spaces
Of the sun-lit bamboo groves.
11 Jan
The statue of Gomateswara
He interrupted us ,smiling,
In our endless dreams,
In the infinite space beyond
Where the eagles soared.
The earth came alive
Where his feet touched .
Thick conical leaves
Intertwined with his legs
To hide his splendid nakedness
From the sleeping world.
We felt small as if
We had to remain silent
While the earth came alive.
( The statue of Gomateswara , a Jain saint [...]
7 Jan
My child-God
In the dark I think of ways
Lateral and skywards
Then and now I think him
A tiny paper scrap
Holds all his secrets.
On its glossy obverse
There is a mystic mantra.
Behind it, he smiles
At first unfelt, unseen
His bejeweled child-feet
Touch the orange sky
As saffron pigtailed bearers
Swing his palanquin-cradle.
Beauty waves surge
Amid perfumed sticks
Yellowed holy rice
Sweet banana slices
Fragrant camphor flames.
Metallic discs meet
Fingers [...]
5 Jan
You
You
That night I thought of you in my dreams
That was , of course, an electrical impulse
Born out of a chance cloud-collision
Later the flowers were paper and of pink hue
The days were red-hot and the evenings weary
Thick green leaves glistened in the sun
Tunneling tiny translucent sky-spaces
I thought of you, again, in my daydreams.
When the brown [...]
5 Jan
The Brihadeeswara temple in Tanjore
Beauty-struck, I returned empty-eyed
My hair all in a warp, my eyebrows knit
In a mock-enquiring way, logic apparent
The philosophy cried, the structures collapsed
The stones had a golden-hued finish
None of the multi-coloured modern kitsch
It was hunger in the belly, a king’s anguish
That caused the beauty’s exuberance
Up there it is giddy, the tower piercing the skies
These stone beauties [...]
