Antiwar poetry book entitled "Planet in Peril: Poet's Lament" for release on 11th Sept.2004

Planet in Peril Poet’s Lament

Madan G. Gandhi

GANDHI EARTH VISION FOUNDATION

H-23/16, DLF PHASE-I GURGAON-122002, HARYANA (INDIA)

First Published 2004

Price : Rs. 250/- ($40) ISBN NO. : 81-88871-01-X (HB) ISBN NO: 81-88871-02-8 (PB)

Written by Madan G. Gandhi

Published by: Gandhi Earth Vision Foundation H-23/16 DLF Phase-I Gurgaon-122002. Haryana (India) Phone: 0124-5054392

e-Mail : southasianews@rediffmail.com

Printed & Typeset by BMC Datasoft (P.) Ltd., New Delhi

CONTENTS

Self’s Orchestra 1 A Courtesan 2 Holocaust Rehearsals 3 Crashing Heavens 4 A Flaming Heath 5 The Blind End 6 Suicide 7 The Border 8 My Assault 9 An Eerie Silence 10 Catastrophic Flood 11 A No-Win Game 12 Even The Skeleton 13 The Perennial Sermon 14 The Acrid Smoke 15 Never-Healing Wound 16 I Explode 17 Columns Of Smoke 18 Chaos On Wheels 19 National Pride 20 Cancerous War 21 All-Deserted 22 Mines All The Way 23 A Zero-Sum Game 24 The Lurid Light 25 Nausea 26 The Blasted Future 27 The Charred Heavens 28 No Sun, None! 29 Man-Made Hell 30 A Raving Sea 31 A New Crop 32 The Futility 33 A Year 34 Flying Doves 35 The Splendour 37 The Luminous Web 39 The Aftermath 40 Burnt-Out Planet 41 Dazed Sleep 42 White Blood 43 Fractured Dreams 44 War's Deluge 45 My Murderer's Face 46 The Invisible Jury 47 Erupting Volcano 50 A Frozen Moment 51 Dying Man’s Declaration 52 Wailing Bangles 53 Nuclear Winter 54 A Frozen Sky 55 Shredded Glory 56 How Long? 57 Treaties 58 Freedom’s Flag 59 Ever Deepening Crisis 60 Ember Dawn 61 Every Mother 62 The Precipice 63 Brown Bread 64 Awakened People 65 A Trusted Mariner 66 Nuclear Fire 67 Sun-Gazer 68 Anguished Cry 69 Collective Homicide 70 The Poet 73 Sadist Maestro 74 Man 76 The Same Essence 77 The Ordained Mission 78 Bone –Weapons 80 Roll It Green 81 Cosmic Red 82 Beyond Recognition 83 Life-Swallows 84 A Mission To Redeem 85 Son Of Ganga 87 Confluence 88 The Global Village? 89 Fulfillment 90 Earth-Citizen 91 Earth-Citizenry 92 I Salute Them All 93 Can A Poet Die At All? 95 Just A Mirage 96 My Epoch 97

SELF’S ORCHESTRA

The lotuses bloom, the vision, appareled in spring, smiles and sings.

Attuned to self’s orchestra, I go blessing every being.

Enter the snake: withered the leaf, stained the petal, shattered my quiet.

A COURTESAN

A courtesan entices the innocent into a bear-hug, whips up communal passions in the profligacy of desire.

Inside my skull hellish fires rage as I gamble for the throne.

A witch lures the hordes to stoke the cauldron, to taste the ultimate power.

On my face the red shame not to be washed.

HOLOCAUST REHEARSALS

Daggers at our neck, cannons at our back, rockets on our head, how long do we go on with our holocaust rehearsals?

How long can we sleep in doomsday dread, in balance of terror, in MAD syndrome?

This self-deception, this dope dream, how long shall it last?

Where are we heading? Does anyone know the direction and the flow? On what precipice bending?

Doesn’t the flow portend the tragic, fated end of all that in centuries fruitioned; a sudden annihilation?

Are we going to begin again, have we come full circle, is this the end of all endings, the point whence we set out in primal times?

Peace love and well-being of all, the goals our ancients cherished went about spreading the message in every corner of the world.

But could not persuade those puffed with powered greed the consequences of clashes can spell a permanent nuclear doom.

CRASHING HEAVENS

Navigating the globe, voyaging in space, what has he brought— star wars and nuclear winters.

Every advance is not progress, every discovery not a blessing but a mixed fare hiding a nightmare, kicking up a hornet’s nest.

What will you say of him who caused the Chernobyl, the Bhopal, the explosions in the gulf, the depredations in Iraq?

It is he who in a fit shall push the button, bring down the heavens crashing and unleash doomsday flames.

A FLAMING HEATH

The owl sits on the top, we shall surely come to grief; the storm is a prelude to imminent doom.

The theory of mutual-deterrence, of mutually assured destruction, but pleas for precarious peace, a prelude to doomsday siren.

Blooming youth is pushed down into the jaws of death, spring-eyed gardens turn into flaming heaths.

The war to end all wars will be fought not with cannons but with star weapons.

THE BLIND END

It is the edge of the perilous ridge; “Withdraw,” I say “Withdraw”, the fall will be headlong.

No star for a witness, no songster for a dirge; the end will be blind, leaving no trace behind.

This way lies instant doom, the abyss of gaping gloom, night of total annihilation caused by nuclear radiation.

Only the fraternal bond will hold amidst clanging of creeds, a war-free world will come to birth through consciousness of common earth.

The die is cast, hell or holocaust; only a seer’s wisdom can avail to pull man back.

SUICIDE

Where to escape, pollution everywhere: on high peaks of snow, in outer space, above and below.

Where to hide: all roads lead to suicide.

THE BORDER

Border is a narrow strip along a steep edge, a line that divides safe and unsafe, us from them, a state of constant transition; its denizens, the prohibited and the forbidden.

MY ASSAULT

I tend my piece of land where my dead are buried, shorten the grass, trim the shoots, pile up the soil to level the lawn.

I shear every sheep, denude every grove, despoil every garden.

Half the world I have laid waste, the other half is waiting for my assault; soon I shall finish my mission turn bounteous earth into a wasteland.

I go colonizing new pastures in other spheres to shift well in time.

So, this complacence to deforestation, ecocide, wholesale pollution, death of the ocean.

Absolutely dead to the planet in peril, what may befall my children!

AN EERIE SILENCE

Before the curtain rings down and an eerie silence envelops the earth’s amphitheatre enactig a ghost dance, turn the floodlights on exposing the monster brandishing its claws.

The bloodshot eyes, the helmeted head, the big-booted thud, sirens, batons, blasts, explosions.

None else but frankenstein who is causing this havoc dragging down the pillars proping up the heavenly tabernacle.

Unsettle every equation, break every syllable of the universe.

CATASTROPHIC FLOOD

One day, you will rue the dreadful deed when gloom shall overcast the sky yellow smog clamp the blackout.

Catastrophic floods inundate the green pastures and dales, turning orchards into desolate waste.

The chill blight of winter striking at the very root shall kill life in the womb, none there to hear even your lament.

A NO-WIN GAME

Civilization on the rack, the wheel of fire in top gear, no hope of respite.

This black and white, this flash point of racial dissension, this fuse for annihilation in the name of man’s liberation, of ushering him into freedom’s dawn in equality’s sun.

Anger and hatred, the propellers of mortal destiny, of nations and empires.

Mind-blowing, nerve-racking, competition in all spheres is a no-win game with stakes so heavy.

Desecrate monuments, pagodas and cathedrals. Train cannons at every treasure, indiscriminately on everyone.

EVEN THE SKELETON

Stop mining the earth, shooting of stars in space; once the button is pressed, the cosmos will be blown off.

Who is over there hiding weapons? Smuggling arms over the land and the sea? Targeting churches and mosques, habitats and hospitals. One day even the hidden skeletons will explode.

THE PERENNIAL SERMON

Where are those hallowed seats of love and peace where once lights had shone to proclaim the perennial sermons?

All lost in the fury of terror, be it Bamiyaan or Bethlehem, Sinai or Jerusalem.

We now hear gun’s ceaseless roar, ear-splitting explosions and cannon’s thunder.

THE ACRID SMOKE

A non-violent nuclear-free world the chant of a battle-weary man, the dream of everyone.

The crusade for a war-free world will go on.

The enemy of man are they who mouth pleas for the bomb, trade in death, let loose the hounds, guillotine the sons of peace.

This acrid smoke chokes our throat, drowns our affection in the cacophony of bombs.

NEVER-HEALING WOUND

The cannon balls flew, with them my child too.

True to my grain, stoically I accept it.

But it leaves a wound that shall never heal, a void never to be filled though I conquer the world.

I EXPLODE

I explode in my shell, my radio-active waves pierce through granite walls, spread in all directions, encompass the globe.

All efforts to contain me, fail.

COLUMNS OF SMOKE

These columns of smoke curling up the sky are no remains of offerings, no unaccepted oblations.

These are no fires lit for sacrifice but giant flares that will swallow the entire.

Having engulfed the earth they swirl and whirl to embrace the roof of the world.

CHAOS ON WHEELS

This rock and roll, these earthquake-like tremors, of rolling skies, of flaming seas.

The elemental fission, cosmic cataclysm, the apocalypse, in one sweep.

Beyond shock waves of pre-genesised darkness, blaring chaos on wheels exploding in butterflies.

NATIONAL PRIDE

What choice: exploded hopes, blasted dreams, before and after— the bellowing cannons.

A stern command: the horror of gallant men in battlelines shouting “kill”, “kill”; the vultures hovering over, the blood-dripping skies.

These warring hordes, mouthing prayers for peace, hiding weapons in their sleeves, opt for hell for good reasons: to safeguard honour, dignity and freedom, enduring justice and self defence all that goes with national pride.

CANCEROUS WAR

A gnawing cancerous war eating up relentlessly every fibre, every cell, cutting the lifeline, blasting the whole.

Cities deserted, stench of the decomposed fouling the spring.

No more warm winds, no more splashes of colour, no more fields and pastures. No streak of vermilion in the smog-filled sky.

A nuclear blast, all-killing its sweep, turns earth into cinders singeing the very roots of life.

ALL-DESERTED

The earth hit by thunderbolt, seas by radiation space by pollution.

Where to go this night? All-deserted, no light.

They have blinded my sun, they have denuded my earth.

MINES ALL THE WAY

Kick stones and lick dust, mines all the way.

Gallop on steely steed on acres of hate, kick up smoke to choke the aged and infirm.

Slit throat of valiant sons, bombard habitats and hovels of the poor, maim and kill children, strike at the mother’s womb in the never-ending war.

Explode all dreams, shatter all plans, create hell, burn and be burnt.

A ZERO-SUM GAME

The mountains are tumbling, the big bang is rumbling; gravitation shall not hold, the earth is deathlike, cold.

The elements are in disarray the world is on the rack, hopes have gone ahiding behind the wreckage of stars.

Is it the implosion of the sun, an utter disintegration? The planets explode and fly above each other.

Who wins, who loses, in this zero-sum game; all consigned to flames.

THE LURID LIGHT

This brittle sound, these sorties in the air, this din and roar, these martial columns.

Crystal lake, placid calm, now, a boiling cauldron.

Chemical waste corrodes the veins and arteries of the earth-mother.

The smoking guns fly past the coffins, lay waste the Eden.

Snakelike hiss, lurid light, of the cemetery.

Gray sticky clouds raise an iron shroud around the dying sun.

NAUSEA

Biogenic corruption corrodes ants-like eating up a universe. Nothing save the ashen gloom, the earth denuded of its bloom.

Putrid smell of vegetation, the stench of phosphorescence, ghost-like permeation of gaseous poison.

Nausea invades my being, no more the forest green for me to laze in.

THE BLASTED FUTURE

Bullet-ripped corpses, legless, armless, bodies, littered all over. Utter blackout.

Wounded, maimed, paraplegic, uncared, shuffling about for light, in darkness.

Incapacitated for ever, riveted to a wheel-chair, artificially breathing, intravenously fed.

The blasted future jeering at man’s bloated pride, inching his way to quick disposal.

THE CHARRED HEAVENS

Who caused these mutations in the heart of elements, the chemistry of heavens changed, the face of the sun blackened?

The skin of space singed, the heavens charred, the earth-mother defaced.

Letting loose a million Hiroshimas, unleashing leopards all over the space. Who’s it clapping come with her noose to squeeze life out of the cosmos?

NO SUN, NONE!

This total blackout, this blood-splattered gloom, a prelude to closing-in of doom.

No flicker, no trace of life in the heart of space; only yellow clouds on the prowl.

Smog-enveloped sky, nothing visible: no sun, none!

MAN-MADE HELL

A hell here, a hell there, hell all around, man-made hell.

By atom’s radiation by nuclear waste, by gaseous poison, by fission’s chain reactions.

Hell of potash, the kicking up of dust, in sand dunes and rocks, in deep seas and caverns.

Shelling and bombing, the green belt, prairies and stone-henges pagodas and pyramids.

A RAVING SEA

The locust floods of mushrooming clouds enveloping the outer space encircle the earth and heaven.

Some contact leukemia, some cancer. The contagion afflicts the genes coursing down many a generation; the poison percolating the primal fount.

No place immune to the poison of radiation; toxic soot covering the horizon, screens the life-giving sun.

The sky hit by yellow cloud becomes a raving sea swallowing globes and galaxies, the earth draped in a black shroud.

Swirling flames envelop the heavens; a million tongues scorpions-like leap all over the splintered space. The planets fall one by one.

The earth by deadly blasts hit, by fission and chain reactions, sterility strikes the burning waste, all consigned to deadly fate.

A million beasts of prey, winging towards the ill-fated e-bay in doomsday-like swoop deface the earth-mother’s face.

A NEW CROP

Why wars, why spill innocent blood, who wins and at what cost?

Is God a global super-cop whose writ runs on the weak, who wields his baton on the meek, who sides with the power-puffed proud?

Shall our affrighted soul ever have respite from the cannon fire, blasts and holocausts— after or before we fall asleep?

Shall the earth-mother ever conceive a new crop of genomes, the blasted womb ever deliver another breed of homo sapiens?

THE FUTILITY

They fought for their nation, their womenfolk, their children, their empire, their flag, their freedom.

But their dead sons and the coffins brought home speechlessly tell the futility of it all.

Their twisted bones, their battered limbs, give a lie to their claims, their alibis and no-win games.

A YEAR

A year of crises, fire-fighting throughout, five thousand years’ civilizations decimated in a few hours by marauders at large in uniform, gulf burning still, half-extinguished flames mocking at the prospects of peace.

A year of defeat for the brokers of peace, conciliation taking a back seat, war-mongers thriving everywhere.

A year of depression, of ethnic strife, of statist suppression of people’s movements, of betrayals and blackmails, of diplomatic cant and deceit, of coup d’etats and insurrections disguised as revolutions.

FLYING DOVES

The flying doves flag off warheads; hurl thunderbolts, wrapped in love balloons, on neighbours’ roofs.

Dismantle a wall, dig afresh trenches of hate, lay mines on sea and the ground to launch an offensive, to avenge the wrongs of history, to redraw boundaries, to retrieve what was lost to a treacherous king in days of yore.

Advance in defense, clear the battle zones of all marauders, to negotiate peace from a point of strength.

Distrust who practise double-speak from their forts of hate, cheat the gullible folk with pleas of peace.

Dagger-in-cloak solutions— for enduring justice for making the world safe for everyone, for removing the threats of WMD by unilateral preemptive interventions.

Score conclusive victory, with death of millions in one swift strike, to make the world free for democracy.

Litter it with broken limbs, shattered hopes, ruined lives, maimed and dead rotting in heaps— their way!

THE SPLENDOUR

Uniforms in green, shining armours, blazing buttons, march in step to the tune of drummers.

Along the streets, along the fields, children throng waving flags.

Amidst the cacophony of war, death raining from above, napalm clouds enveloping the skies, screams for shelter rending the air, shattered bodies littered all over.

The war-in-action, ghastly, gruesome.

Doctors and nurses, ambulances and trucks, foot-sluggers and soldiers, in sweltering summer, in wintry cold, round the clock, in dirt and mud, in snow and fog, through the awful stench, all on duty.

They salvage the remains, bury the dead carry the wounded prayer in their heart tears in their eyes.

A singed heart on atom-stained earth, no caller, no call.

How can you resurrect a father blown to pieces, a farmer caught in crossfire; how can the earth’s splendour return?

THE LUMINOUS WEB

Patches have worn thin, the sky wears holes of the size of the earth, the ozone layer is torn.

Chaos enters triumphant growls to gulp down the earth, swallow the sun, reduce the sky in a shambles.

Who shall weave the luminous web, who shall spin creations; will the sun rise again, will life revive on the earth?

THE AFTERMATH

A time comes when burying becomes a problem, when there are countless dead and no gravediggers.

Winter wind blows making eerie sounds, limbs frozen in grotesque shapes, arms stiffened like the twisted twigs.

The earth a wounded snake writhing in pain, the smiling habitat turned into a sepulchre.

What respect for the dead, what funeral rites, when the dead outnumber the living in the aftermath of war?

BURNT-OUT PLANET

Lethal flowerbeds nuclear shoots, the cellars bubbling forth poison.

Locust clouds enveloping the horizon, the beaming planets sliding into black holes, the chill blasts turn vegetation into cinders.

Left-- the bent cows and goats, one-eyed monsters and demons,. stalking the burnt-out planet.

DAZED SLEEP

Every crimson sunrise shows up stains of blood, every war-growl drinks up the very spring whence flow the life-giving waters.

Every sigh stirs up the memory of a lost son, the warmth of family frozen in the tracks.

In dread we sleep in dread we wake up to be lullabied into a dazed sleep.

Now no lazing under a tree, no carefree dip in flowing waters, ever on the run for a gasp of fresh air.

WHITE BLOOD

The bloodstains in the rainbow, in the green and golden the ultraviolet and crimson.

The blood turned white when I killed the son and dropped death on my kinsmen.

The culture dashed. Won me the cross.

Many times I rolled up my sleeves to eject death on civilian habitats, felled churches and hospitals.

A convict, I enter a dark dungeon where nightmares scream, no respite, none.

FRACTURED DREAMS

Dreams fractured, all profession of peace belied, I sleep in constant dread, palm-pressing my battered head.

A part of me paralyzed, I slump into my shroud force-fed by the other half to stay alive.

Light breaks out from the shrapnel gloom and I slog through mire in search of elixir.

How empty sound the vows of peace, after every war how hollow the victory claims!

The earth mined, no spot for a sapling of peace, the stench sickening; all dreams down the drain.

WAR'S DELUGE

The monuments of excellence, . the relics of a civilization’s crown— the pagodas, the pyramids, the towers and trade centers washed away by war's deluge.

Shrieks in a burning hell let loose, combustible fires raging infernally, mouthing fear, hate and ire.

I feel a wrench at the very thought of war.

Orphaned, widowed, children struck dumb, the mother motionless, the dead son in her lap; the all-enveloping smog tightening the noose.

Not a sigh or a stir in the wintry vast.

MY MURDERER'S FACE

Hurrying to the holes to breathe poison-free air, away from the stench of dead bodies littered all over with vultures hovering above, the smog clouds swirling and curling up.

I scream for succour, amidst the debris I look for a crown; with every cannon burst a cathedral tumbles down.

Among the rubble the countless stars, that once twinkled and cheered, in blind stare mock and shock.

In their speechless eyes I see my barbarity, my murderer's face.

THE INVISIBLE JURY

My shadow is growing larger, its umbilical cord is becoming invisible and it is seen walking with giant steps encompassing the earth and heaven.

I watch it merge into a life-cloud, sink into the Milky Way.

A giant fish, leaping up and down, collides against the rim of a fleet on an espionage mission.

Writing my name in darkness in lettering of fire, the idea crosses my mind - my moment has come.

I close my eyes to pray. Suddenly, lifted by a tide, I become part of the longest current sweeping across the waters.

I feel I am on some other planet, transported by a light beam.

From within the life-cloud someone appears on the screen.

Jutting out from a crystal ball, making ‘V’ sign pointing north, suddenly I fall into a spell, my shadow confronts me with a grin: “Are you the one who have devastated the land and the sea, spread pollution everywhere making the planet uninhabitable?”

I feel the poison enter my being— my throat choked, my voice lost, my sight blurred.

“See this divine, exquisitely wrought, ethereal layer of ozone showing up patches here and there larger than the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Aren’t you the one who punctured it?”

The verve of the tone is electrifying.

The accumulated guilt of all my sins rises up in my fevered brain, a heavy load weighs me down, I feel utterly down and out.

Other shadowy figures join in pointing their bayonets at me.

“O God! I am ruined”, I say to myself.

Then from the jury someone thunders: “Aren’t you who enacted Cheronobyl and Bhopal? How long have you been in this life-killing trade, making poisonous gases for chemical war, exploding the atom and the nuclei to unleash annihilation on earth and the outer space, to efface life from the cosmic womb?

“The scroll of your crimes is too long. Punishment for each one of them is eternal damnation”, the jury thunders.

The nightmarish shadows swirl in my brain and I taste the hellish pain.

I carry a time-bomb tied to my waist, feel like pushing the button to outwit the insistent inquisition but the fear of instant death restrains me.

I picture doomsday staring at me. My whole cerebral mechanism, unable to bear the load, breaks down.

I suffer brain hemorrhage, go into a coma, but they will not let me die; in an instant they revive.

Again I am before the jury, dumbfounded, pleading guilty, unable to defend.

A knock at the door wakes me up from my nocturnal session with the invisible jury.

ERUPTING VOLCANO

Screaming wasps shooting poisonous stings with computer precision make me swirl up like the erupting volcano.

No bay safe for passage, no strip for landing, no field for take-off, no place for a haven.

The dove, affrighted, sits behind the wreckage; every jungle on fire, every gulf in flames.

No rainbowed visions, no earthly blooms, no ocean orchids, all springs polluted.

In the debris lie splinters of my dream.

A FROZEN MOMENT

Every time I sip my sadness, it sticks in my throat; my stare gets cranky and I look like a jinn unloosening the lid.

Am I the same after my home shelled, my son killed by blast, my father shot?

No hand to caress, none there to repair the rot, none to wipe out the scars; no count of the dead in the debris of stars.

With freckled flag where to go, all roads mined and the fuse ready to go off!

Nothing before or after. A frozen moment have I become awaiting the fall of a hammer.

DYING MAN’S DECLARATION

No more shall I wait. All around the desert closing in.

No gesture, no word, bayonets break into my eyes.

My prismatic body can no more withstand the chemical combustion.

What these changes in the ecosystem— the holes, ozone-layer-like, in my skinny coat.

I am bleached, asphyxiated; dumb, I write the dying man’s declaration.

WAILING BANGLES

The sight of the maimed and dead brought home amidst the beating of drums.

The shrieks of babes and women, of wailing bangles— the sobs of vermilioned earth.

With every sip of sadness, I drink ale and blood and suffer for my part of the sin: how I dragged down the heaven.

Pierced by pricks, I can no more sleep; my timid self is gnawed by grievous guilt.

Too close, yet too far, to the solution: a convict counting my crimes in a lone cell; a senile, waiting for the call.

NUCLEAR WINTER

The fire that burns within moves my heart to sing a song of peace for the war-ravaged world.

Only a barren soul dead to human suffering, to ugliness all around, can retain its calm.

What avail these inventions that fail to stop the poisonous emissions, deadly gases that overflow making holes in the ozonic roof?

What will happen to the sun, to life on this imperilled earth, who will be there for the dead to mourn if nuclear winter is let in?

A FROZEN SKY

No more can I bear this drama of mortal strife blasts and explosions this burning amphitheatre on wheels.

Mother-earth forbids me to destroy the clock and revert to the olden time when we lived from moment to moment.

This MAD Syndrome, this cut-throat competition, this balance of terror, if not rolled back, shall spell annihilation.

Constant upsetting of eco-balance, the ceaseless churning out of gaseous poisons posing danger to all life on this planet polluting the very spring of life.

The scenario of a frozen sky: birds paralyzed in one stroke, animal kingdom struck blind, all Nature gone deaf and dumb.

The planetary tabernacle stopping in midair, moon and stars in space transfixed, utter blackout amidst doomsday flames, no sphere swinging to complete a revolution.

All strike-force immobilized on the ground, loaded guns and missiles unexploded, all weapons of mass destruction. No war fought, no war won.

SHREDDED GLORY

When all is over, the curtain rung down, who a hero, who a villain? Varnish-washed, all look the same.

The chips down, the suspense-crammed play turns into a bland narrative.

The defended flag of a bygone tribe is consigned to the museum.

Every new empire is reared on the shredded glory of a power-drunk war-lord.

HOW LONG?

Bled, we bleed burnt, we burn, shot, we shoot friends and foes alike.

Stoke racial fire, cultural cauldron, ethnic strife, national wars, one after the other.

How long these shibboleths, these political gimmicks, these cloak-dagger skull rites?

TREATIES

All treaties, a piece of paper to be torn sooner rather than later.

How can peace prevail when insanity rules the roost, mutual trust takes a back seat, betrayals become the rule?

Raise walls and more walls, barricades and bastions of dragon fears and hate.

Love is the alchemy to turn war into peace.

FREEDOM’S FLAG

Peace has fled, love taken wings, only hate rules the roost. Where to find one’s calm?

Where to find a heart that melts at other’s suffering; a soul that embraces all, who bears the stab of racial strife? . When shall the trauma of war give place to order of peace and the world rid of hate and fear?

When shall freedom’s flag unfurl over the land and the sea and all walls break to let man be free?

EVER DEEPENING CRISIS

Every twenty five years one more India joins the globe— a big slum.

Ever deepening crisis of governance each one’s destiny existentially ordained in a Hobbesian world of cut-throat competition.

Feet burning with heat of mass consumerism, the planet bending backward under the overload of exploding population.

How sraining the cosmic explosion of expectation! the whole earth deficient to meet even one man’s consumerist greed.

The modern day leaders Nero-like fiddling with people caught in communal crossfire, the planet smoldering at both ends.

Gone that green eco-mystical way, a life of sharing, a reverence for life, a growing concern for millions.

Tribal habitat to the global village, dingy dark hovels to electronic-fitted cottages— capping them is the oligopoly in deep crisis.

Only a seer’s wisdom can avert and diffuse the ticking bomb of ever rising population ecological and thermonuclear doom.

EMBER DAWN

Every dawn buried in a trench, every mind benumbed by the shock.

The deathless spirit smiles in all-enveloping night, holds its head high in nihilism and despair.

Never lets die the ember of hope even on the cross. Wear the martyr’s crown.

EVERY MOTHER

Every mother prays for long life of her son, his well-being, his blossoming.

Wants peace that her children sing peace carols and psalms, the anthems of creation.

Affluent or indigent, stern or indulgent, every mother wants this; yes, every mother.

She wants peace, for sure, peace; no war, not even a scuffle.

Let mother show the way when mankind has strayed away.

THE PRECIPICE

My brother stands before me ready to kill.

To embrace the stab of hate and be killed or to dismount his proud head. In a fix I press the button.

The chaos let loose, the bloodhounds set free upon the children of one mother who shared bread and broth in one kitchen, basked in the fire of the same hearth, slept under the same roof and together played hide-and-seek.

How to retrace from the precipice, avert the headlong fall.

Mother is lacerated by each wound her children inflict upon one another. The irreparable loss is hers, the tragedy and suffering is hers. To her never shall it be the same again.

Spreading her cloth, she wails: Come home my children, come, there are forces who will not let us live, they have planted bombs all over my bosom. I can bear the shock of their explosion but not of another forty-seven.

Please throw away this gun, hurt not your mother’s womb. I pray for the life of all my children, may peace on the earth prevail.

BROWN BREAD

To every toiling today and tomorrow I owe my little joy and sorrow. In my big and little plans my priority is the common man in the eternal now of the earth, not in any prenatal, real or imagined, birth.

Immersed in work-a-day world, otherworldly things hold for me no charm, neither the treasures of heaven nor the terrors of hell.

Mine is a loving, fulfilling world where love and friendship clasp no shadows, everyone strives for peace and brotherhood a world sans violence and war.

Neither through divine intervention, nor the promise of a kingdom of heaven, but by honest toil in the service of fellowmen, can mankind be saved from hunger and want.

AWAKENED PEOPLE

When the people are awakened, no tyranny can put them down, bare-chested they confront the tanks and brave the mightiest tyrant.

Undeterred they march on and on paving the way to liberation, overthrowing structures of oppression, annulling all chains of enshavement.

Sow the seed of life everlasting, foster the order of universal well-being, bind all human beings in fraternal bonds, on love’s foundations raise a war free world.

Singing the song of happy cheer send peace-balloons in the air, with warm hands and noble intent free every man from fretting fear.

A TRUSTED MARINER

Without change life's stagnation sits, wooden chair becomes the torture tool.

Stone walls enclosures manacle life’s acres, no grass is green on hedges.

The world’s toughest yacht race, this life, different crews but same are the boats racing against the all-prevailing currents.

The only professional on the ship, by opposing pulls assailed in the tidal crossfire is caught.

Learning from each bit of mistake one becomes a trusted mariner, the mentor of rebellious seas.

NUCLEAR FIRE

Civilizations rise and fall, tombs and catacombs, ideologies sabotaged, betrayed and bankrupted.

There goes to debris the house of Soviets, towers and minarets, hoary and hallowed.

The only light that stands out in pitch-dark is of nuclear fire, terrific in its overkill.

No leader, no prophet, amidst the reigning chaos, yet we wait for the saviour to come with a secret remote close to his chest.

In our dreary desert we long for a whiff of fragrance, a song to cheer, a refreshing shower of grace.

SUN-GAZER

Electrons on the run, mountains crumbling, oceans tumbling —a dance of dissolution.

Dark clouds vanishing in depths of desolation, dreams dissolving in passivity’s benighted ocean.

Shadows close by enfolding eternities, I stand my ground gazing at the sun.

ANGUISHED CRY

O Lord, save me from the nuclear blast, the blisters of radiation, the yellow smoke of explosion.

Tired of annexing territories and crowns signing death warrants of near and dear ones setting free the hounds of mad ambition I have reached the end of the tether.

I don’t want to die in the cannon fire, in the cacophony of bomb explosions, nor live in rat holes of nightmarish fears, the thought of the day after makes my heart sink.

O Lord, save me from the holocaust, from the nuclear fallout, from ravages of radiation from the thermonuclear blast.

Lead me out of this horrid night; usher me into the dawn of freedom, the tides are rising full, draw me out of the whirls.

Awake me into awareness of ongoing wholeness— the organic continuum of various orders of creation.

Bless the earth with a new dawn of freshening intelligence nurturing nectar springs.

Cleanse the dark ravines to revive within me beauty and harmony, the life-affirming vision.

COLLECTIVE HOMICIDE

Afloat on a sprawling sea, burning and churning, smoldering and smelting, the rugged earth.

In multi-millennia navigating through sea routes and continents, conquering and killing the natives, colonizing, building empires.

In the name of Allah the merciful, Christ the lord of love, Jehovah the stern justiciar of a mighty race, connecting black and marmara sea.

I have survived time’s mutation, history’s upheavals, its vicissitudes, flowed in the dreams of multitudes like the sounding bells of dawn.

A witness to Byzantine glory, Roman brilliance, Ottoman opulence, the hordes of marauders coming from barbarian habitations.

Always bubbling with mighty turbulence, unfurling the ensigns of victory on the minarets and prickly domes, every time raising, new cathedrals of renown.

Torched in the next moment into rubble, melted concrete and Iron, from the towering eminence mocking at the Creator.

Still hoping for a new dispensation, yet asking — shall that ever come how much more destruction no one knows!

No end to popes and priests, those dupes of an ingenious goddess whose tentacles surround the earth mushrooming altars of sects and creeds.

Truth lost in the parochial darkness of faith worshipping unknowable abstractions, oblivious of the pressing concerns of fellowmen raise altars to goddess of fear and hate.

Hypnotizing its soul-killing hold sending many a people to the theatre of war drugged by the one or the other abstraction.

Religion, race, tribe, nation, language, caste, kinship, region— the sub-national identities raked up by the ingenuity of a conditioned brain.

Sunk in the mire of unreason, worshipping the id-generated gods, luring people into their bloodstained altars for collective homicide.

Obdurate in its intransigence, repetitive in its pattern of occurrence, learning nothing from the inherited wrongs or the fatal sins of forefathers.

Forcing and coaxing to sacrifice the finest flower of youth to safeguard the glory of a stone, or avenge an imagined wrong.

Puffed by artificial pride of narrow sectarian slogans, they go on a killing spree claiming foreign territories.

Raise armies to extend their dominion, to get back a piece of land annexed by the precursors of the present regime. Any excuse sufficient to support a fight.

Waxing full the national frenzy before unleashing a crusade, a war to the finish, be it Vietnam, Iraq, Gulf or Afghanistan.

Everyone dies a martyr in the name of saving his religion or nation. No concern for the earth-mother whose children are we all.

When shall this consciousness dawn, O Lord, when?

THE POET

When all beings walk erect, cast no shadow, the earth is hallowed.

Colonialism gone, statist communism gone, but tyrannies appear in new avatars.

Revolution abides, though broken and shattered; human resolve outlasts dissolution.

When everyone sleeps, the poet is forging words.

To rouse, to bring forth a race of warriors.

A new epoch, a new order, a new discourse of harmony.

Invites everyone to join the congregation, of love and brotherhood.

SADIST MAESTRO

How long will you treat man as a beast, O priest?

Hasn’t man made gigantic cathedrals and pyramids, space-stations and satellites to navigate the cosmic seas?

Unravel the mysterious skein, divine conception and design, the trinity and the God’s plan, man’s redemption and his restoration!

The paradise he fell from, its lustre, its brilliance, his divinity, his grandeur, the envy and exemplar of gods.

When shall the kingdom return, how long a wait, how long, O priest? Stop drugging man with soul-killing poison, no more dopes, no more delusions.

Let him be a free man with no altar for worship, his head bloody but unbowed before any tyrant of a god:

The creator, perpetuator of this iniquitous world, a chimera born of man’s frenzied brain, the sadist maestro of the zero-sum game.

Let man work out his own salvation, freeing himself from all parochial darknesses of faiths dismantling Berlin walls and iron curtains, eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.

Only love, compassion and service will bring his release.

MAN

Unfed, unclothed, unhoused, uncared, he moves unseen, unwanted, unloved.

The real man, to him belongs the earth; his home, the whole universe.

Prior to Popes, prior to Churches, prior to crucifix-tasting-man, prior to kings and emperors, prior to conquerors, battle-worn.

On his bones has risen sky-kissing towers of civilization every pyramid of ambition, every dome of revelation.

Unseen, he is always there, unsettling every plan, occupying the centre-stage with floodlights on.

THE SAME ESSENCE

Everywhere the same sky, same patch of land, same sun to bask in, same moon to dally with.

Same in America, same in Europe, same in Asia, same in Far East, same in Africa, same in Japan, the same water encircling the earth.

Go anywhere, eastward or westward, you will meet the same people: same affections, same passions, same festivities, same feasts.

Skin-colour may vary, the blood in veins is the same, same alternation of moon cycles, same lunar rhythm in every being.

Same upswing of high tide, same fall and swell of waves same passion to kiss the moon same star-lit crop in full bloom.

Same nostalgia to go a-fishing in the night sky, same wonder catch once in a blue moon.

Same splashing of moonbeams, the dulcet lilt of wafting breeze, the heart-throb of primal harmony from sphere to sphere reverberating.

Behind man’s moods and seasons, high and dry, cloudy and clear, sweet and bitter, of every flavour, same pattern, same rhythm.

THE ORDAINED MISSION

(i) Walls break, peoples hug, Germanies unite, there is light.

Amidst gongs and bells, new world is born.

A new Europe rolls down the escalator of time.

(ii) Ringing with cries of freedom, prestroika unfurls in the sky, glasnost breaks the union.

A new confederation takes off to join the older choir, new priests are anointed.

(iii) Bishops sit in circle, kiss crosses one by one, blood and flesh a real feast.

No heretic nailed, no prince crucified, no one killed in fake encounters.

State is on the alert to let no assassin go scot free.

(iv) With no regret or remorse I walk out of the prison after a twenty-seven-year spell.

I am my future held in chains yet a beacon to my men, the Mandela to my generations.

I fix my gaze on my son dispatched to the guillotine, I burn red with rage struggling to break open the cage.

No sacrifice is too dear to break asunder human chains, that my fellowmen be free from the accursed slavery.

BONE –WEAPONS

The anger of a whole generation frozen in my bruised bones, slogan-weary, action I want.

With my bones I forge weapons to continue the fight for the wretched of the earth.

A choking in my throat, not content till I wipe every stain from the face of the earth.

I wake up in a new dawn, join the historic march to overthrow tyrants and empires.

Hail freedom’s birth; O ye, the herald for everyone, the bard for the crestfallen.

ROLL IT GREEN

Beyond the barbed wire is the luscious green; who dares jump over the wall shall get an electric shock.

Gone the barbed wire, torn the iron curtain, dismantled the concrete wall, the estranged meet in a warm embrace.

The children of one earth, sharing a common hearth, flowing from the same source, set on a historic course.

The grassy green around, bustling with merry sound, is the heritage of all; indivisible.

The wall that stands in-between shall not be. We will roll it green this summer.

The earth is one, the universe one, the eco-system one, all life one.

COSMIC RED

No walls separate us, no chasm yawns, nothing stands in-between the mother and her sons.

Red is the colour of every son’s blood, of the killer and the killed, the mother weeps for both.

When “isms” contend and explode, the blood that flows is cosmic red, the same at birth and death.

Same the ale and bread, same the flavour, same the stench, even remains the same.

BEYOND RECOGNITION

How cloying the deeds sung by bards, the blood-curdling exploits of heroes slain in war.

How empty it sounds, “a hundred died in one round.” Headless, in heaps they lie battered beyond recognition.

What for? To satisfy the whim of a war-lord, to annex a mound where not a blade of grass grows.

Not to vanquish the evil that lurks in human breast, not to slay the monster that tears asunder our calm!

Why add to senseless strife? Why swell the ranks of Satan’s tribe? Why not raise our arms to the One who shall order our redemption?

LIFE-SWALLOWS

O Lord of the sea, give me your fury, your roaring clarion, that tyrants quake.

Blow into my soul the breath of your vision that I embrace multitudes in my vast outspread.

Burn away, dear, every doubt, every fear; to every predator I be a scourge, every power-drunk war-monger.

Bury beneath the timeless sand every grievous wound, to let grow a million springs abloom that life-swallows chirp and sing.

A MISSION TO REDEEM

Why put restriction on import of immortal love songs? Why restrain fancy’s flight, why screen away the light?

Why not let winds freely pass before your door, wherefore your windows close? Let the sun come in.

Your whole future is at stake, let new thoughts come straddling along plotting a putsch at every iron wall on your roof the ensign of freedom unfurl.

Why be afraid of a whirlwind the agonizing trials and tribulations? Nothing can shake your roots embedded in the deep solid earth.

Your goal, the well-being of all, not merely of one people, your glasnost and prestroika embrace the whole world.

Freedom for every man, the earth as one family, you envisioned at the civilization’s dawn. The oldest sage was your father.

The world calls you again to come out of your narrow shell and speak of the abiding concern for the entire human race.

You are the most enlightened seer, the philosophy you have lived and died for— the truth common to all religions, above the din of dissension.

You have nurtured the dream of a unified cosmic consciousness irrespective of race or nation: peace to all men, peace to all habitations.

You have flown kites in the open sky, moved in unwalled space, envisioned an order-will cutting across frontiers.

Unappeased your appetite for all good things, every peacock your prosperity sings, you are friend to every man fired with a mission to redeem.

SON OF GANGA

Born in penury, in adversity rocked, in seismic upheavals flown on the raft of flesh and bone.

Go over the seven seas forging bonds of love, with poets from many lands in earth-consciousness bound.

Musing on the river Cam, cruising on the Rhine, flowing verses to Yangtze, son of Ganga goes to meet his brothers.

From Paris to Rome, Beijing to Taipei, Bangkok to Tripoli, Kansas to Cambridge.

Create confraternity of poets, the legislators of mankind, to usher in the citizenship of the earth.

CONFLUENCE

I bequeath to you, my child, the pride of being born in this hoary land of man’s first spring.

Here sages sang the first hymns to light, and the Ganga of civilization came down from heaven itself.

Here thronged from many lands streams and rivers to a confluence of cultures and beliefs greening the earth with universal love.

Pillaged by marauders, laid waste by bandits, from the ashen gloom you arise, unvanquished.

Beneath the silt of time flows the Ganga sublime with psalms and hymns of a hoary civilization.

The enduring remains of her sacrificing sons, the inheritors of halcyon past, keep her soil forever green.

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE?

Internet has come, the world has shrunk, are we in the global village?

No more the neighbourhood, no more the sharing brotherhood, no more the bond of affection and duty.

Gone the carefree community life, of sitting round the fire in wintry nights.

No more spinning of fortune’s change, no telling beads of stars.

FULFILLMENT

How fulfilling! the longing for more love, the dreaming of new dawns, the hoping for new shoots.

Relax the choking grip on throat to release the captive voice, that no scorpion fear gnaw your soul; happiness is consummation of the whole,

Not of a part, of body, or of mind, not of one people, but the whole mankind, not of one region, but the entire earth; for all life in common filaments is bound.

EARTH-CITIZEN

Nationalism broken, ethnicity triumphant, terror on the leash!

Whereto are we heading, backward or forward, one world or tribal herd?

The earth-citizen!

When shall he come to be baptized?

EARTH-CITIZENRY

A field it was of waving hands, of rhythmic steps, of a slow-moving dance.

Yellow and red, black and brown, white and bright, every colour and shade.

The whole choir sang, in bliss of harmony, serenading to the earth-citizenry.

I SALUTE THEM ALL

Mines all over the earth, no safety cover over my roof, sky’s blanket wears many holes.

Tortoise – like I withdraw into my bunker shell, anxiously wait for it to get clear.

Suddenly the bottom of the ocean is ripped open shooting up tempestuous whirls.

Lightning thunder breaks ribs of mountains, hurricanoes wreak havoc.

God of doom is seen closing in the noose around the gasping earth.

Horror-struck I watch the doomsday dance in the tunnel of gloom.

Some monster – blizzard bashes the earth-mother Devki-like plucking her hair.

Mother’s chest is flung open by deluge of mineralled flares by thunder-wielding cyclones.

In one hoary aeon a boar had released her from the clutches of a mighty demon pulled her out from the bottomless deep.

Where are those mighty heroes like Bhagiratha, the bringer of holy Ganga from the inaccessible glens of heaven.

Now no Agastya, the ocean-drinking sage, no Dadhichi, the bones-weapons-forging seer, no nachiketa, the knower of death’s mystery.

I salute them all, the heroes cast in martyrs’ mould, all-glorious their scroll of deeds.

CAN A POET DIE AT ALL?

Who is there philosophizing atop the hoary hill: the earth is dying, the sun is dying.

Aren’t these sheer lies? Can a poet die at all? Isn’t he the same before and after the fall?

Why beat the self-same drum, worn out by diurnal dum dum, no more can it bear the strain, constant tapping shall affect the brain.

The capsule that I bury this day, the truthful record of an ill-fated play, the climax and denouement of epic dimension caused by a fatal flaw in the psyche of man.

At the same spot I shall bury the living and dying profile of the sun, the blue-print of a new civilization yet to arise on ruins of the existing one.

JUST A MIRAGE

Not enough space for all on this boat, promise for its upkeep a pipe-dream, disrupted is nature’s equilibrium in face of the ever rising population.

The earthly reality is a living in an unfriendly dangerous jungle where for some fortunate ones a well-protected, a well-heated cave.

The multitude starved of even their basic needs, in dread of wild animals and inclement weather live defenceless, roofless, under a bare sky, preyed on and decimated by beasts and vultures.

Blasted all hope of man’s collective evolution in humanity’s civilizational scale, just a mirage, his totalistic liberation, Yet the dream survives in man’s consciousness.

What rules this ever shrinking globe: the pleasure principle, satisfying only the uppermost ten percent of the North vis-à-vis the suffering millions of the South!

What redemption to a world divided between the rich and the poor, world population growing in geometrical proportion and the living space shrinking for new births.

The archetypal earth citizen must evolve a design of living in a world bursting and burning at the seams, own responsibility for his resurgence or relapse, for all beings are bound in a common destiny.

MY EPOCH

My epoch the noblest of all, each person an end unto himself freedom’s mansion not raised on debris of empires.

My architectonic blueprint envisions the non-robotic city of man where they abide in light of bliss sans all trappings of ego-self and hubris.

I see the commoner rising, guided by light of conscience and reason, see him affirm his right and autonomy firmly rooted in human affections and duties.

In the temple of physical self they must work out their own salvation, repair the working of the inner psychic being by merging in the Cosmic Person.

A global Gandhi on the world horizon a world free of nuclear terror, sans trauma of ecological doom, a new creativity flowing from the wholeness of Self.

Non-nuclear non-violent new world beyond the hunger-belt of the planet, the redeemer of man’s millennial dreams, encapsulating his holistic global vision.

Planet in Peril is the poet’s lament on the frantic stockpiling of nuclear weapons imperilling all life on this planet of ours. Unlike modern day Neros who are seen fluting with sadistic ecstasy when all-engulfing flames are threatening to turn this only habitat of ours into a burning inferno, the poet’s soul weeps in mournful numbers when he reflects over the impending disaster. The poet rightly feels that unless we transform the very script of man, unless we give him a totally new programme of living and being, we can go on talking about peace but we will go on preparing for war. That’s what we have been doing for thousands of years: talking about peace and creating war. With the same energy man could have created paradise on earth; and all that we have done is to create a hell instead. As a consequence the general attitude today has been growing more and more towards death and everyday it is bringing death closer to this planet. Any day this planet can explode into utter annihilation. The whole intelligence —technology, science, politics, everything— is directed towards one thing : how to commit global suicide. The poet holds the politician and the priest responsible for this mischief. Both are war mongers. The politician creates war without, and the priest creates war within. This is by far the longest and the greatest conspiracy against humanity. The poet has chosen themes of vital significance to all of us offering a vision of responsibility for the condition of the earth. He makes a strong plea to stop forthwith these holocaust rehearsals lest we chant “our own requiem before our time comes by, when polluting the environment, digging our tombstones, without epitaph”. For from silently accepting the holocaust of Nature and seeing the world driven into thermo-nuclear confrontation, speak, thou, Poets and all, before it may be too late! Now!

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