Fathomless and Other Poems Read online

Fathomless

  And Other Poems

  Samir Dash

  Published by

  www.patterngraphic.com

  Fathomless And Other Poems

  By Samir Dash

  Visit poet’s homepage at samirshomepage.wordpress.com

  First Published in 2009 BaishnoMedia, India

  Republished with permission from the poet.

  Copyright © Samir Dash, 2004

  All rights reserved.

  Digital Editions rights owned by patternGraphic, India.

  First Edition : 2009

  Current Samshwords Edition: 2011

  PG2011B2

   ISBN 978-1-4658-7910-3

  For the girl who taught me

  what I should look for, in love…

  Acknowledgements:

  Among my conscious debts are phrases from T. S. Eliot (from The Waste Land) and Nissim Ezekiel (from The Hymns of Darkness).

  Contents

  1. Fathomless

  Epigraph

  Closing Chapter

  A Painting

  Old Wife’s Tale

  Utterances

  A Night Preparation

  Longing!

  A Moral

  The Celebration

  Fake Castle

  Betrayed

  At the Strangers’ Street

  The Beginning

  2. When words fail...

  3. Sense Betrays, Images Don't

  4. I Search...

  5. Burning Bride

  6. Apprehension

  7. What, when, which, who, why, how?

  8. Have Mercy on White Things!

  Fathomless

  Epigraph

  “Love is itself blind .That’s why it let’s you see more clearly…”

  I. Closing Chapter

  In the darkest of alleys

  at the misty hour

  an old man begging for life

  in the age old remaining

  of the Shiva temple.

  Years before the alley was not

  the morgue of dry leaves

  who mutter when

  you walk upon them

  to warn you

  against the life’s truth

  man is but a ‘handful of dust’ !

  With the rise of the hour-hand

  and the ringing of the far away bell

  the sprits rise

  with their unquenched stories to be

  re-opened and retold …

  II. A Painting

  A shadow moving across the bay

  rising with the setting sun

  taking a dip in the roaring sea.

  Alone perhaps… deep in his thoughts

  talking to self

  “why one loves if

  to love is to fail oneself

  at the need of the moment?”

  When everyone expects you

  to bring some laurels;

  when parents wish you

  cross the crossroad,

  you betray their dreams

  just for a sake of an emotion!”

  With the vanishing footprints

  on the sand

  the shadow is no more.

  The leather jacket of darkness

  enveloping the shadow

  making him the un-detachable part

  of the black paste

  that paints the canvas…

  “True” mutters the painter

  with the thin brush

  dipped in black, that spurt out

  like the burnt out Palm leaf.

  “The moment ago ,

  What the image of the lover

  that lingers at the bay thought

  was my philosophy too”.

  But with the change of time

  and with the change of passage

  one has to repair his moods

  his thoughts, ideas and views.

  “so, there is no surprise

  if now I have

  a divorced legacy of a frustrated view !”

  III Old Wife’s Tale

  Told the old woman

  with the growing line of seriousness

  resting at the far corners of her chin

  the story of the old painter

  who once loved a princess

  of course of his dreams

  not of any state.

  Childhood memories are

  but a part of the album,

  where among the fading snaps

  you search for

  the sweet moments.

  But the black – and – white

  moments do betray

  with their promises to

  colour up your life…

  The colour was used

  to bring them to life

  but as mere dark-light remainings

  of the passing moment.

  So, that smiling chin

  above the grey shadow

  of your princess is not what you see, but is

  just what you can imagine

  how she looked once

  standing at the last corners of time’s street,

  when the painter too

  didn’t know except to smile

  at the darkening lens

  with the innocent looks.

  As the miles crossed

  with the dropping innocence

  “we used to grow”

  with our growing senses

  with our passions and

  perhaps

  a little hunger.

  IV. Utterances

  “The truth is harsh, but true.

  We shared, what other lovers had

  except a heartfelt emotion

  at least I feel that even if I agreed to share

  it was a fear to her.

  What prevented her to

  open her thought

  sitting beside me

  is an unknown episode

  -- a mystery book

  with its last pages lost

  into the fathomless dark

  pulling me inside.

  I sit over the heap

  of dead skeletons of the glow worms

  who lost their youth

  in search of some sweet fragrance

  of some deadly plant.

  Looking around I found myself lost !”

  V. A Night Preparation

  “Money is hardly my aim,

  but there is the lurking wish

  for what it can buy”

  A charming mirror

  like an Yes-Man

  always ready to nod

  in affirmative

  at every wish of the princess

  “Who is most beautiful in the world?”

  “You yourself, with no doubt”

  replies the shining plate.

  with the tempting voice

  the glow in the eyes grow --

  So, what if hundreds like it would

  bow down to the ultimate beauty?

  Wouldn’t that be more nice

  to have millions

  with their thirsty eyes

  look up at the

  sweet piece?

  “Yes!”

  whispers the princess

  “I need something more

  to prove my beauty”.

  So,

  when above the far edge of the sky

  the blue shawl was raised

  with hundreds of silvery glows

  spreading across the sky,

  the princess leans over the castle window

  and waits for the hoofs

  of the stranger

  with his promise of gold.

  VI. Longing!

  Tears of a drop or two

  dropped from the old eyes
r />   that once loved the mirror

  more than the man.

  but with grip of age,

  the mirror cheated the million times,

  cracking the mud castle

  of the princess’ dreams.

  “Now my lover is not here

  only his remote memory is,

  whom I thought a sure-thing

  is now an impossibility --

  a much faded dream!

  VII. A Moral

  The little girl

  with innocent looks

  right beside the Grand-Pa

  looking for butterflies

  points to the red beauties

  over the green thorn --

  “Aren’t the lovely?”

  Nodded the old man smilingly

  in his usual way

  with a resonant voice

  “Yeah, they are -- the roses;

  but what makes them special

  is not what they are,

  but for what we keep for them

  inside us -- a little room

  in the kingdom of our heart

  a special room”.

  It is that special place

  that brings someone close

  makes someone a part of us

  perhaps creates the rainbow

  while you are standing under the rain.

  VIII. The Celebration

  Gold is stronger,

  stronger is the lust

  than the faint morals of love

  “You don’t need to wait

  when your body calls

  to serve it with another”

  Rapenzel’s hair waited for the

  touch of stranger’s ride.

  And princess shared the aftermath -- a sweet nothing

  with the stranger -- the sweeter than the old painter”

  Pink is not the part of night

  ‘cause it is morning to come

  bringing with it an end to an erotic dream

  to the flickering eyes,

  trembling hands and heavy breaths.

  An episode ended,

  unknown to the world…

  unknown to the lover

  who thought she was the queen

  the queen of his heart!

  IX. Fake Castle

  Evening falls,

  not with golden chariot

  to take you and move about

  in the land of dreams.

  The open passage

  the bare feet

  both are the hard facts not dreams with my each step

  with my each move

  what comes to my mind is

  the drowsy dream of your sweet voice, of your rosy smell.

  But with the company of the heartless Time

  with no interest

  at the beats of nerves

  with the blank eyes

  and in empty glance

  I hear the castle falls

  on the bank of our childhood

  -- once we made together

  against the threatening foams.

  To your questioning eyes,

  “we are for eternity,

  not these foams”,

  was the answer

  that seems a lie today

  a fake piece of faith

  like a cracking table with

  no lasting legs.

  X. Betrayed

  Not that they know

  how years pass

  with the passage of time

  with the passage of sorrow and

  perhaps a deep sigh.

  Age was not the same

  when Sun used to smile

  with the rays of gold

  with the fearing cold and

  perhaps a hearty dream.

  They used to play

  on the bank of the memory

  with their feet in sand and

  perhaps a drop of salty water.

  Time flew, like a bird

  and they grew old

  with their cherishing dreams

  with the growing passions and

  perhaps a pinch of lust.

  Innocence remained no more

  the part of their eyes

  with the hunger of the flesh

  with the sensual screams

  perhaps a goal is achieved.

  They have reached the goal

  have known how it tastes

  in the embrace of the other

  in the beat other’s heart and

  perhaps no need to wear the mask.

  They knew, living together is not easy

  as it once seemed

  with the masks on

  with the hunger in the hands

  perhaps, it’s time for separation!

  Not that they knew

  how years pass

  with the passage of time

  with the passage of sorrow and

  perhaps a little sigh.

  XI. At the Strangers’ Street

  When trust is in question

  you never know

  whom you love

  and long to own

  has her heart reserved for you?

  When faith is in question

  you never know the one you believe

  next to you

  has one’s ear reserved for you?

  How to know, when you are in doubt

  what you feel,

  those sweet beats of your heart,

  are not meant for the waste?

  How to know, when you are in dark

  what you think ---

  those pleasured voices

  are not to be made silent?

  In the street of the crowd,

  lots more to gather

  you are there,

  but can not utter

  the rising utterances

  the bitter agonies

  along with the sweet pains

  that your heart bears

  to tell someone near, some close

  those words, you long to open

  In the Strangers’ street,

  none is so close

  not even dear !

  A deep sigh perhaps,

  or a long passing breath

  at the moment’s end,

  is what you need --

  you need to exist

  and to exit.

  XII. The Beginning

  The beatings of the bells --

  the sun shall shine

  over the broken walls

  of Shiva temple.

  The paused storm;

  a young one amidst the dead leaves

  all wait for a new start,

  a new beginning.

  What the old man wanted was

  just the re-packed version

  of the lost story -- to be alive again

  to make a new start

  from the desert of the distant past .

  He said:

  ‘I’m forced by the five senses

  to fear the five senses !’

  What is waited for, is a story

  I not know

  But when I search for more

  I see a vacant paper

  where a vague memory

  threat to linger !

  When words fail...

  The days were dark…

  And the moon was out …in the nights!

  But suddenly what came were no words …

  But the feelings now pasted to this paper…

  Saying something which only the passing breath may express…

  Still incomplete and unexpressed …

  May be this is what that expression…

  Or something lying deep inside…!

  Sense Betrays, Images Don't

  Sense betrays...

  Images don't.

  Moving over the bridge

  slowly... silently

  two images sit at the far corners of the sand

  hands in hand, lip on lip

  like two shadows

  each in other's arms

>   Moving over the bridge I see,

  slowly... silently.

  full moon riding over the misty sky

  smiling slightly with the teeth-less lips

  Ages have gone by,

  And history is repeated

  "What you see tonight

  was the dream of those two

  ages before you were born, this city was born."