For You Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Whom shall I address but You?

Perhaps You came by chance, not choice,
But I rejoice. I feel the urge to find
The frisson of another mind,
Another’s eyes, even if purblind,
To ratify my strange incertitude

On mornings when I am not so sure
If I belong with others of my kind,
My forebears, elders, friends unknown,
Who share the isolating world with me.
Can it be that it is but illusion?

Not so, that doesn’t jibe with what I sense
Intuitively as Actuality;
A chink of dawn between blue curtains,
The arabesques I make with outstretched arms,
The hints of morrow that is 'Here and Now'.

I rise and shuffle to my balcony
To re-confirm the filtering horizon
And remember how the distant hill
Would re-emerge in tentative outline,
Enacting Change and Permanence at once.

I traverse then through clouds of shaded grey,
Past misty memories and books, once prized.
A.Huxley had a Fifth Philosopher, whose Song marvels
How each living creature is a singular
Survivor among zillions of spermatozoa.

It may be Chance or some unknowable Design,
But we seem to be both unique and kin,
Statistical freaks, improbably here.

All our tomorrows will be delusive and vain
Unless we wake up certain that we live
In the tense we call ‘present continuous’.

Let us cherish our unique difference,
Laud our selfhood, understand the Other,
And feel that we are kith.

- - - -
April,2015. Mysuru, India. The allusion
of the Fifth Philosopher is to Aldous Huxley's
Poem-sequence, 'Leda' (c.1920)