My Unassuming Look Poem by Ratnakar Rout

My unassuming look
Fails to steal the sight of any one any more
Like the contours in the down hill corn field
Cruel wrinkles and unwanted ridges
Have conquered the island
And engraved their inerasable footprints
On its soil
My imperial head looks like a snow-clad hilltop
Gray beards appear as if sporadic snow-fall
And has cover the surface in patches here and there
Penetrating glance of my enormous eyes has become
Short of vision with out the spectacles.

I have mounted the steps of the age
Year after year on the time ladder
And to my plight I have become an uncle
To the younger generation
I feel pity at times
As in the mean time I have grown old
And becomes a senior citizen.

I am not that ‘I’ your subject of estimation
I am not the body
Normally you envision
I am not seen but require a body to live on
But look, I have no relation
Nor attachment to stay in unison
As to my wishes I leave the body
And never return to that once again
I am that ‘I’
Who is neither die nor born
Who does not pass through?
The cycle of birth, growth and death
It is always the same element
The perpetual source of enjoyment
Always the same young and jubilant
An epitome of innocence
When you are engulfed in worldly bondage
A happy fish in the ocean hides in hibernation
And snores in deep slumber

A monumental awakening awaits HIM
When liberated through absolute detachment
A complete isolation breeds a situation
Where I do not live on my head but in heart
I am not occupied by pretence but innocence.

At that time you are not YOU,
The appearance you have
You are your inner-self
You are not the matter you are the atom
You are not the cell you are the nucleus
The shelter of neutron, proton and electron
You are YOU, your inner self
As I am now
When a shadow of realization preoccupy
A feeling sprouts in me
I am not some body
I am every body
You are ‘I’
And I am you
Those every body are no body
As you and I know
You, they and I are not separate
From one another
We are one as of now.

No distinction, I mark
The whole universe embraces me
And kisses at my feet
I am like a neo-natal baby
Thrills everybody in my presence
Not through my words but in my silence
Through my innocent smiles
I enchant the beholders perpetually
With the images in different incarnations
As I remain young always
Even if I have grown old
After the same is intensely realized and read.