My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic -4 Poem by Seshendra Sharma

When I was in the seed, I heard a note.

Desire stirred in me to sprout and see the sun and sky.

To drink the nectar of wonder in silence I became the tree.

I became the dream of the tree in its branches which is to say,

I blended within me, the melody, the essence and the scent;

and became the flower.

Because it is only as a dream, that I can

comprehend the secrets hiding in me.

In the dream was revealed to me, that

earth, water and air are different forms of the same matter,

and that I, combine within me the ultimate content,

the quintessence of the three. Soon after

this realization, I became three-

Wore colourful wings. Became a butterfly

and ran after myself.

Dipped myself in the leaves and came out

as parrot and ate myself, the fruit, ,

I became a fish, forgetting my shorelessness,

swam across waters for unknown shores...

I am a tree, all this is the journey of my life.

Autumn anoints yellow on my leaves,

wind removes my garments, mist sprinkles holy dew

over my nakedness; and I the tree like a king

after coronation confers imperial gifts of

cool shades to the scorched earth.

Day is flying its thoughts in the blue sky

turning them into pieces of white clouds.

Hazy breeze is breathing life into my limbs. And the fruit

hanging in the branches looks in wonder at the tree,

which is for ever flowing, dropping leaves and bearing new ones,

and again shedding them like a stream of life endlessly.

The fruit wonders about the secret of this tree!

It bathes in showers of leaves that come down

at the slightest touch of the wind, feeling the bliss and beauty

of the falling leaves....

May be, fruit is the seer, who went into depths of meditation,

to learn the inscrutable secret of life.

It sees life in death, otherwise how could

death be so beautiful, is its enigmatic question!

Even a thousand seasons of spring, cannot achieve the grandeur and

beauty of a single nude tree, which has renounced

all its leaves and flowers...

Oh, I am bathing in beauty,

I swoon in the storms of subtle and deep pains

which beauty inflicts on me.

O what a tree this this standing grandeur

where is its secret? -so thinks the fruit hanging to the tree.

It realises before it drops from the branch that

the seed of the tree is inside itself and that

the I of the fruit is no other than the I of the tree...

* * * *

The earth is a natural museum into which generations of flora and fauna set;

And our children, the wingless birds set, like rays of evening sun-

And sons of new generations rise from new

Wombs and new seeds, with new faces, surrounded

By new orbs of light only to weave new civilizations, for the pages of history,

Which keep bulging, until the axe of time descends on it mercilessly.

Sweat flows as an eternal under-current of history, the sinews of human machine work, to

Make this glittering superstructure remain,

constantly creaking like gigantic wooden wheel, never at rest and never fed with grease-

History, the stupid woman, works up her hoary voice in tremulous tones, to narrate the

Epic tales of man from graying reason, men listen to her in all times-

The museum is filled and emptied; crowds pass in, and pass out through the halls, like moving winds restless for an unbounded journey, for peaks unseen, unknown but dreamt of generation after generation by the eyes of trees, animals, Men and molecules: while the drums of armies, governments, judicatures, dictators and demagogues continue sounding their empty fanfares-

O each age hungers for a passion, each age invites the rule of stupid theory, willingly; subjects itself to its sovereignty,
while the intellect remains critical,
watching and hatching the eggs of a new age-