Solid Or Misty, Change And Constancy Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Some days I wake up before dawn
And step into my balcony to view
The familiar hill that spans my horizon.
Some days I find the crest-line lost
In mist or halo. Had I climbed the steps,
I would have been speckled in Cloud Nine.
I lost count of the steps; what is Cloud Eight?
Or the Seventh Heaven – the First will do.

If yonder hill, a mass of rock and mud,
Can lose its contours and granite,
Yet soon regain its shape, secure
In its own identity and shape,
A geologically unique
And long-enduring entity:
A local feature on the city map?


I wonder if I am a continuing Self,
Impervious to seasons, rain or shine,
Ensconced in Ego as someone on Cloud Nine?
Or am I a wisp of nimbus cumulus,
A shred of cloud among the sundry lot
That streak across the dark of dawn
In shades of carmine, orange, grey,
Attesting Change along with Constancy?


Till yesterday I was a Self within
A human frame, lodged for a while
In ever-shifting cells, showing perhaps
That Change can mean renewal. But now
Am I the same person, a corporeal entity,
Diffused inside a Cloud of Being,
A mere particle, self-deluded
As something unique, incomparable?


Would-be writers and poets should
Put away the itch to liken things,
Moods and fancies in tropes
Of similitude and metaphors
Which flout reason and exactitude.
But when sceptical and unsure
Of continuity, I seek words
To ratify reality. Poems may spark
Intuitions of a flow, a course
To a destination and a purpose.
The Bard of Avon imagined
A Danish courtier perceive
A cloud as a camel and a whale.
An English painter sketched the shapes
Of passing clouds, leaving others
To analyse the components
Of nimbus cumulus and cirrus ions.
I should have learned some Science,
But poetry and art and philosophy
Have been constant companions.

- - - - - -
21 June,2015. Mysuru, India