Reunion In Prospect And Retrospect Poem by Venkateswaran Krishnan Sreenivasan

Reach out into the years gone by,
When our ambitions were flying high
To strive and shine, to excel and win
Our choicest career amidst no din

To be one in eighty, we did feel proud
To be a cynosure of neighboring crowd
But couldn’t forebode the hard grooming
Ahead to make a skilled doctor blooming

Some of us stuck in our destined job
Some did pursue their learning and probe
Deep into their science for expertise
On treatment, by teaching and treatise

Our teachers were our guiding light
That led us in dark and dreary plight,
Their wisdom mended our blurred insight
To think and do what is always right.

Idealism, empathy and compassion,
Traits we held aloft with passion
For the past four decades of our mission
Are going out of fashion

Wedded to medicine and then to one’s wife
A busybody is doomed to a disturbed life
Starved for time for the kids or for romance,
Happiness at home happens by chance.

We branched out to diverse fields with zeal
And devotion and worked to heal
The legacy of honour we left in its trail
Lingers as footprints to follow and hail.

Many are gone after playing their role,
Many are waiting in the wings to go,
The time has come to search our soul
For the human ebb that has ceased to flow.




Our fertile streams of thoughts and deeds
Ennoble the earth by their endless flow
And engender the future seeds
That sprout and enhance the planet’s glow

Fear of death, dependence and disease
Haunts us as the demons of despair seize
Dreams unfulfilled disturb the sleep
And the quality of life plunges deep.

Frail bodies don’t matter, it’s the will
That sustains to eternity all our good
And the strength to do any task uphill
Till the last call comes to our door for good

Navigate not the distant stormy seas
But look back into our calm sepulchral past
For lessons to face the ordained last
Without frustration or fear, but in peace

Our temporal bodies have lost their temper
Mould them into shape by help to the have not
In our midst, who have little to ponder
But their shelter and hunger, to better their lot

Energy, self-centered, dissipates and dries up soon
Like a stagnant pool in the summer sun;
The flow warming the woeful hearts is a boon
To the world with many of its ills undone

Superfluous living gets us attached
To our transient spoils, albeit not our own,
Sharing our surfeit, will make us prone
In the last years of life, to get detached

Contented with our mission of care,
In silence and devotion did we dare
For decades to fulfill our destined role
With humility, conscience and a simple soul

Puny puppets appear and strut
And stride often on our earthly stage
Noisome too, they blow their trumpet
And fools adore them like a learned sage.

They disappear in turn and again appear,
The mob throngs in festive cheer
Wreaths and requiems their coffins fill
A void, they proclaim, difficult to fill

My mind strays and wanders into the wild
And frolicking like a playful child
Climbs trees and dives into streams
And creates illusions stranger than dreams.


We work for peace of our body and mind
Strength, pleasure and dignity, in work we find
No good ever comes by chance but by choice
Of hard toil accomplished with poise.

Great achievers are energized fountains
A Gandhi or a Lincoln could move mountains
And glitter like an eternal star in Heaven,
A beacon to inspire generations of men