My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic -5 Poem by Seshendra Sharma

My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic

CANTO 1V
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Poetry is coming like a red red horse,

like a an arrow from my blood, like the life

of a martyr! It is not letting me breathe!

From across the vast glass-pane are coming

turning into words, all those trees, all

those roads that run through the trees all those

people that the roads carry, all those loads of skies

that people bear, and all those horizons that hang

from the skies; helplessly-

Every moment of mine, comes and goes,

chistling itself into a sculptured piece,

One time as my nation, another time as

my song. Yet another time as my poem, and then

as my blazing sun.

With new faces, wearing new halos of light

my poems come, jumping and dancing

on the new line of my eyes.

On my roads are written letters of

welcome; on my footsteps are rained colours

by roadside trees.

Some children are playing marble, out there.

those very marble which they play today, will

ascend the guns of tomorrow and destroy these

gigantic edifices of oppression.

They shall raise new buildings and new

sunrises will be born in the hills.

Can ranges of mountains stop the dawn?

Sun will any how jump forward, cutting

across with a thousand swords; he will plant

red flags of light on the hills-

The shining roads, which today are

bearing on their backs rolling motor cars, will flee

away through these crowds of trees..

I may go and I my not return; but there

is no escape from my memories; they shall sing

forever becoming birds in the air, they shall become

a million rays of light and spread a net on my

people.

Don't I know my child

What sea is roaring in that tiny drop of your tear,

and that is why I shout my appeals

to the trees, "you must bear weapons and not

leaves on your branches"-

* * *

rocks along my way, entreat me for voices,

voices, voices.

Chariots of experience roll over my chest:

though the flesh of my body is crushed under

the weight of their wheels, I stand staring at the

clouds of thoughtful dust left behind.

I dropped everything as a tree drops its flower.

I cannot explain how powerful is the

beauty which comes out of renunciation!

It is only when I can change my age from

youth to childhood, or from childhood to old age,

from one to another, and summon at will, the

spirit of the years of any part of the life given

tome, only then I become unconquerable, before

that, I was only a ship, sinking between

the peaks of birth and death.

My desires are temples erected on the

peaks of hills, I, a traveler, trekking my way on earth.

I am longing to vanish into the womb of

midnight silence, to pray, into the temple where

there are none, not even god disturb my solitude.

* * *

To achieve this one unique word you do not

know how much, how hard I had to dig into

my soul.

I ran with flying birds, offering marks

blood to the earth with my wounded feet.

I joined the monks of flowers and immersed

in the colours of deep penance, in the forests;

shoulder to shoulder practiced hoarse voices with

wild winds, that come rubbing their skins

to the arctic regions;

Blew off myself into the wide seas, mixed

up with unruly cyclones; made at last the lap

of hills into my temple and became a god.

then all the sounds of creation came, with

halos around their heads, crowded the blue roads

of the sky, looking at me with strange satisfaction.

But I am now immersed in pure silence.

It is so profound that no one can

comprehend my condition.

For me now, there are no sunrises, there

are not sunsets, there are no colours, there are no

melodies.

There are no experiences known to any

of the human senses.

It is this moment that squeezes me, and

offers to you,

the heavy hot drop of a rare meaning...



In the forest of rays, I was badly bruised running,

Sharp rays pierced into the flesh all over my body;

There a lone tree, in full spring dropped a huge tear.

that tree had spread its shade once, over my tired body...

flowers are bound to bloom on the limbs

of the trees one day; my country should chop the

hands of butchers, who fell trees and run a saw

into their bodies.

Birds sing thoughts of the trees, poet sings

thoughts of the birds...

All do not know, only the branch which

lost the cuckoo knows what spring is, and only

the birds which lost their songs-

Spring is not the same spring, which every body believes;

It is a season when flowers sigh heavily.

The birds can fly away, but where can the

tree go? Even when cyclones besiege it the tree

stands rooted to the earth in determination,

its life dedicated to the soil;

like me, clinging to my country, though

I do not possess one inch of land in it.

Even the wind does not know when the

leaf falls. Bees are bidding farewell, to flowers, and

the stream of my village meanders, away far, far

into distant bushes, to sleep,

come, my feet, take me there.