(This has been inspired by a chat I'm having with E.S. Shridhar @esshridhar, my friend on twitter)
I thought I saw you behind the fire face of the sun; Behind the cold face of the moon.
I thought I saw you looking at me from behind that blue mask you wear on your face.
Is that you in the billowing clouds swollen with rain? Are you the rain? Are you the storm you unleash?
Is that your voice I hear in your thunder and lightning? In the destructions you wreak?
Is that you I perceive in the Cosmos of infinite creations?
Are you that river that meanders across the earth like eternity?
Are you that ocean that exists like time without end?
Is that you being born as new grass, new fruit, new star, new life?
Is that you who died in the funeral pyre last night?
I thought I heard you in the entreaty of a prayer; In the supplication of the clanging temple bell.
In the chants, in the intonations, in the pleas, in the flower offerings, in the curling fumes of burning incense, in the blowing of conch shells, in the beseechings of unshakeable devotions.
Are you that deity with the face of stone that stands so mute, so aloof?
I look for you in my yesterdays, In my todays, In my tomorrows; In my past lives, In my future deaths. I look for you in the skeins of dreams you have woven around me in all my existences; In all my extinctions. I look for you in every lamp you ignite; In every flame you extinguish.
I look for you within me; I look for you outside of me.
I thought I saw you everywhere; I see you nowhere.
I see you nowhere!
-by Rita Putatunda
very nice. somehow i hv always felt that writing poetry is much much more difficult than prose or what we call novels. a novel offers much more scope to a writer to play with words but a poem has to maintain its flow of thoughts rather feelings. it shud touch the heart. and this has to be accomplished by using selected limited words.
ReplyDeletevery nicely written..and again this is a poem which resonates the feelings & thoughts of perhaps everyone. don't we all try to see someone and more often that not, we don't see the person
i am not an avid poetry reader and frankly between english, bangla & hindi & if i can include urdu shayri (within the gamut of poetry) i like shayri. i liked the poem ma'am. very nice. pls keep writing.