My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic - 2 Poem by Seshendra Sharma

CANTO - 11

The lilies open their lips only to speak of

you, the leaves whisper in my ears, your craving

for me.

I spend nights without sleep, staring at the

starry skies, with my heart torn, between you and

my people.

My eyes carry you and my nation, as two

candles in search of my island of hopes; where

my people wander on the sandy beaches in gay

abandon, tear the flesh of fruits with their teeth

and prowl like beautiful wild animals.

where I the storm, fled away from the

oceans take shelter in the coconut groves of your

bosom

Where, my nation, surges like a wave of the

sea which does not carry the load of ships, where

the morning ray does not stab and kill the

population of dreams of my people, where I spread

myself, as enormous green pasture for my country's

children to play and romp.

Let us go there-

Where the roads of my country ramble into flowers

in the month of chaitra, and carry like trains

my people the travelers to great festival.

Let us not sit idle,

let us go and join our great people, with

our sickles, in the festival of harvesting.

* * * *

Once before the jaws of monstrous cities

Swallowed me

I used to relax my limbs on the golden sands of seaside beaches.

And stretch my gaze beyond the restless

Waves of the blue sea.

I used to bathe in the vague sweetness of fancying the objects and lands,

beyond the limits of my visual experience…

is it Rangoon, or Singapore, or Bangkok,

or that large chunk of water, that liquid sapphire, the Pacific,

which is my blue dream flying

In the sky, fallen to the ground, having lost its wings, somewhere suddenly.

Seas are punctuations in the sentence of earth

The running civilizations breath rest a while

When commas, colons, and hyphens interfere in their travels.

They are then introduced to the lands of new shores,

with fresh looks and In fresh garments.

Seas are pots of ink, which the earth uses

To write her romances.

Empires, civilizations, scents of knowledge

Are scribblings, which the winds carry from the seas.

Those ancient winds, light the cities, rule the countries.

And, it is the same ink with which the epics

Of man are written. Time swallows the poems

Written by man, for the health of man.

I ate old poems now, and vomited their

Undigested limbs. Now

My hunger is for the new word.

I knit poems now with the void

Thundering beyond my eyes,

With the blue whispering beyond my seas

With the heights soaring beyond my stars:

With depths in me which my hand

Cannot reach,

With al the material which my

Contemporaries are not familiar with-

Beyond the cities in which I remain

Undigested:

Beyond the forests where my soul hatches

Her yearnings,

Beyond that circular line which binds all

Created things and only the one arc of which is

Visible to human eyes,

And beyond which my third eye, craves to burst:

There waiting for me

My blue, blue sea, lying in wait

For centuries on end..