Visit to Ulmer Muenster

The smoky silhouetting trees lining the hill, the blue setting horizon
The golden sunlight suffusing the stray white clouds
Tiny moving black spots far away for flying birds
The wintry evening outside the office window
lost quickly to the night away from my eyes.

Grandeur plainly in sight, right by the eye-side.

This past summer in Ulm, Germany,
that grandeur crept up on me one day
while I was not looking

Ulmer Muenster,
your first glimpse
in a little game of hide-n-seek
between buildings ...

Eventually I saw you rise up to the sky,
taking people inside you,
offering them space and light to
offer what they have or wish to offer
Offering them your rock soul and some solace
in the dim damp light of candles, old used-smooth wooden chairs
to sit on. The robed men offering you naked words and music
that you in infinite rock wisdom clothed in grace and blessing.

Pray tell wherefore came Fear inside me for a second ?


The idea of transcendence is binary. Awe has degrees.
The poet had felt fear upon choosing transcendence.

Practically speaking then, even an hour with angels is a lot.
(Even in grief.) Thus people take to working on things,
staging this and that. Thus the vehicles of society
work even inside you.

And the heart-warming part in all of this that day -
Mischeif. The urge to scribble wherever,
leave our imprints, our i-love-you's
Even on your rock-awesome body,
strong, staid and beautiful
which took me inside deep
and I felt joy and elevated
as I rose inside you towards the sky
and saw the scribbles everywhere
on your rock grandeur,
that has gained something more
from the sweat and faith of all the good men.

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23 June' 13 was the visit

Roadside Winter-night Observation in Toulouse

Remember the god who shouldered the whole world ?

So too appeared the man who
- borrowing briefly the resilience of steadiness -
pedaled on slowly through the fog
into the lonesome wintry night,
And the calm woman on the seat behind,
who held him.
Together they kept the spokes of the world turning that night
giving some image to the one sad in love to hold on to ...

Someone or the other
Will keep carrying the weight of our lives.


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Tlse, main road near Carmes stop

Sermon on Faith (Both Good and Bad)

Faith in a belief that is borne out not too well in the fast world becomes eventually a principle for this brief passage.

Dealing with Depression / Do you believe in true love ?

An aphorism on the Internet had pronounced
"We hear the melody when happy;
we hear the lyric when not"
INCOMPLETE ....
the happy tune of course plays happily
and with us when we are happy;
the sad song brings the sad news
of our sadness like pieces of headlines or trenchant op-eds;
its melody haunts

but for completeness ...
a sad song is sometimes acknowledged when happy;
a happy song is like an unbecoming mirage
that our eyes hear through the mist
when they are sad.

Look at me, even sadness
has become a thesis of an emotion.

Perhaps then, sadness is born
in the gap of love and love's-lost.

If so true, it soon follows that
true sadness born in the gap of true love and love's-lost
will have to be borne

Isn't it, my friend ?




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Oct' 13 :

Memory of Ave Maria in Venice

Tears
yet to come,
the day heralded wakefulness.
The divine element everywhere available
Not taken that groggy morning unlike the dewy flowers,
Warm bread's delicious simple first bite,
Strong coffee's quick sharp kick
that day uplifted.

Later
Venice and I pulled us each other,
and the pleasant sun watched us.
So did the speeding train as
I watched the countryside, dozed.

The sea eventually came,
as always cushioning enchantment,
and more this time, not counting
the giant cruisers - a sight in themselves ! -
and us tourists.

Then came the time to cross the bridge and lose oneself
in to a different world unseen and unheard before,
where life was moving an unusual form of usual.

Tears still yet to come,
we walked and felt like adventurers
watching the water taxis,
or that small bridge, which was a glorified door
you could say, or even reaching a dead-end,
and we ate ice-creams like kids,
the sun smiling upon us.

And then
They came out of nowhere.
Or expressed in a rather different way, they were always there
in that Venetian courtyard with the singer
performing a voice practiced to perfection
for pennies. They assumed their perfect shape
for those brief moments, as the song flowed outwards
from somewhere deep inside him, that all the rest felt silent.
All around me fallen to silence, the universe and the voice and the song
swirled upwards in perfect unison and I looked from the side
Silently.  With tears in my hands as an offering
to Beauty that I can only best express
- to spare expression - as stronger than me.

Memory can be recalled at not-impossible costs,
and for that I am thankful.

The tears come and gone,
it became easier to breathe again,
the adventure resumed if it had stopped,
and it continued eventfully
till it culminated in magic -
The orange lights brushing the water softly
in the after-dark to remind
that however mundane something is -
like wooden lamp-posts with shifting bases -
imagination is the key
into almost everything.

Sermon on Faith

Faith is good as a sturdy walking stick. Do not make it a crutch for longer than necessary. Too much use of a crutch will naturally weaken you.

Road-side observation in South Bombay

Q)
Eat we must
even by the road-side.
But why must we shift dust
by few metres
as a chore ....

A)
The appearance of order
gives a feel of control 
giving patently useless chores
more utility than visions ....


P)
He seemed oblivious to the springs
stretching from the broom to the dust motes
and back,
like a busy puppeteer being pulled by the puppets
in a world that does not know
what it wants.

For G

She unwittingly honours me
By choosing me to tell her
What nature tells her everyday.
That she is so very beautiful,
from her head foremost,
through her gentle bosom
and graceful hands
that can make beauty itself,
her smooth skin and stomach,
her back made for beauty,
through her slender legs and more,
all the way to her toenails.
She is my beautiful one.




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6/Jul/13 Toulouse
23 Blvd du Strasbourg

Innocence & Evil / Insight into Poetry / An aesthetic for discomfort

Insight is not easy fodder for a melody,
                                         or for that matter, a poem ....
It doesn't turn into a thing of art
                                            by itself.

Like then,
             when a little glance registered,
                                       And became an uncomfortable nugget in the mind,
When in plain view on the plaza
The innocent child pushed another
                                                 from behind
                                                                  to hurt.
When Pure Evil was expressed
                                             without malice towards oneself,
lending itself to trust and honour
                                              more than hidden goodness.

Hiding may confer some advantage
                                                 If life is a competitive sport
                                                                                        to be won at any cost
(if art is to win over
                             at any cost).



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4/7/13 Toulouse
Fountain near Capitole

For a friend on his marriage

From cradle to the crazy (college) days
We moved by chance as if care
was a distant foreign cousin.
Today, you solemnly commence -
the courtship successfully ended ! -
to build a nest together ...
Now, caring will be your test
                                              And joy,
for love is a foregone conclusion,
as you, together, unleash
a newness
                  unto our wildly beautiful world,
a newness
                  that never existed before.



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PS : For PrateeKatrin

Untitled

Every thing is made beautiful
on a beautiful nostalgic day
by nostalgia;
even that dirt
even the days of boredom
and the mundane mood

Ignorance

In the days leading to the end
the child hopes
that he learns
how to not understand
and live in profound ignorance


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In the days leading to the end
the child hopes
that he takes
a sip of the hot tea
by the calm garden window
and not furrow the brow into a frown

Untitled

the blind couple in love
nursed broad smiles under the sun,
stumbled along gracefully
on a busy rainy day
learnt that love is a lesson
that carries one all the way ...

Keep busy, son ...

When do you keep busy, son ?
when do you keep busy

When things they don't look easy
then they just won't look easy;
when without rhyme you be queasy ..
then you Have to keep busy ..

how to keep busy, son ?
how to keep busy

Write a busted rhyme in fun
Go for a run may be
rain, moon, shine or sun
Fake smiles may tire you free

Saying things are easy
they are always easy
the true solid one
is not busy when busy ...


------------------------------------


(when you keep busy when things are easy
you be the one who keeps them easy !)

Feb-Mar' 13
Toulouse

Untitled

Every pearl forming in every oyster
will get a jolt from thousand waters
and grow funny. The waters themselves
jolted by pearls and airs. The airs
blown away by the volcanoes and
the grass where the ants play the
perfect ant symphony until the fires
hit for the cause of the next crop.