Ananta Madhavan Poems

Though King Sozhan stakes the red scepter,
All canopied in moon-bright white
Clasping the Ganga River to himself,
Lament not, Kaveri, long may you live!
...

All my life I have longed
To tune the woods and sing
A song of joy,
To know the instrument of self
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The dream I fathered has disowned me now
And vanished out of bounds of Memory Town.
I called the Secret Squad and told them how
That dream had stayed awhile with me and flown
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Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday
Accumulate the baggage of the Past,
Some bits for re-enactment in the Future.
Successors can call it History.
...

Snapshots of moments, that's what poems are.
Some people are keener of the camera.
'I am a camera'. Think of a person
Whose head is a camera, adjusting his ear-knobs.
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The walls are falling.
Earth shrugs its shoulders,
Jails crack and are level with the ground.
In the high tower the chains crumble
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Locked in the comfort of his tragedy,
He grows into a self-chosen hero,
Lofty as a Hamlet of indecision,
Declaiming lines of noble agony.
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A room full of people:
Sad, solemn, grave, they sip their drinks
And tease their segments of experience
For a private view.
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Anil the squirrel was bold and brave,
He could race, he could leap,
He could climb like a knave.
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I shrivel in your absence;
I moult,
I grow a carapace,
I shrink from every touch.
...