Cast to the valley wind,
withering into the element,
the lone rock, forlorn twig,
shivering lake of the late season.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of peace.

That first time when voice breaks:
the agony of growing up
in a transient world; Moments
when the rhythm of hearts
beating in unision breaks, pain
that accompanies sensation here:
of loss when age catches up with hope.

The constant, the concealed ever-present:
suffering, the shadow of life.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of lasting peace
in a world of transient joys.

I.

I wake up, wake up, as if
hearing the solitary leaves fall
in the breeze
in this late night:

Is that you? My pulse,
freezes for a moment.
Or just
a face in the crowd?

Did you not die?
or did I
wish you out of my life?
Is this, a nightmare?
Or just
my fragmented plane?

II.

Come, friend, let me inspect your wounds:
ah, have they healed well!
You have always been
a sort of miracle-worker.

What was the need for all that pain then?

Oh those carefree
days bygone of Nazareth!
Where we learned
to chisel our destiny.
And ran after severed kites floating away
in the dust winds.

What was
his name who we learned
Aleph from?

III.

Oh this pain:
of life, growing out,
growing out
like a sapling out of
a crack crumbling
out of an ancient wall:

do the skies weep out
in commiseration now at our fate?

I hugged an ideal;
and now I am outcasted.
And I am outcasted.

IV.

Do you hang on your
Tesseract
my friend, broadcasting
your assumed pain about
in the four dimensions?

I know them four well.
Three of space
and the fourth, of pain:
pain, concealed, hidden
in our
cursed world of normal dimensions

V.

Who do we change?
Do we change?
Isn't all change death?
Die, die, I die:
Die, friend! Die, Relation!
And now
in the darkness I am awake
counting
the shadows of falling leaves.
Why am I alone
in this deep night? Where kin
mine own? Is that you,
that face, the
face I saw in the crowd?

Did you not die? I heard of it.
Never gathered the courage
to come, see for myself.

VI.

What was
his name who we learned of
Eli and Abraham from?

The night is a deep well:
stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.

Flash a lamp in, lose the light.

Braveheart awake in the late hour,
is there a solution to anything?

Events unfold; Always unplanned.
Reason an afterthought.

Still we dream. Dreams dreamed
all night, for a newer dawn.

To achieve something, something
that can make me more than you.

Are you cut out for that yarn yard?
Who decides when

a weakling mortal
breaks out of fatal space?

Flash a lamp in, lose the light!

Stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.
The night is a deep well.

Earlier I did not know god as God
and gods were my friends.
now I know God and God
and I have a master.

Long before my time, my pagan lands
were deluged by the sword of the believers.

and so it came about that
growing up under the rubric of the believers
I, an infidel pagan, think like them.

so, I approached the high priests
and professed my faith in the one Saviour
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, Do you believe in the One God
and His sole and final apostle?
well, that depends, I said, on
how you define 'One' and what you mean
by 'God' and who can be called an 'apostle'.

I was too pagan for the believers.

so I approached my pagan brethren
and asked to be admitted into their fold
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, what Order do you belong to,
my friend, and what may be
that of your fathers and their fathers?
well, how matters, I said,
the Order my fathers belonged to, or not
to any, when the Spirit lights my heart?

I was too catholic to be pagan.

And so it is that time passes.
Ever wandering by the margins of creeds.
That yet neighbour me on my land.

Earlier we did not know god as God
and gods were our friends.
now we know God and God
and we have a master.

A streak of light flashes past the late sky.
It is the distant future.

Or futures, may be?

A knot at the junction of possibilities.
It's a space vessel. Intelligent life whizzing by.

# 1.
Nobody notices the decrepit rock.
Doddering about its axis and orbit by the sun.
Inwardly consumed.
Like Mars.
Long drained dry of all her life.

# 2.
Too hard to resist, the
mysterious peace radiating from the surface -
Contact:
and Earth,
enters the union of worlds.

What road it is that is not to be taken:

for all our righteous protestations
and blaming of the Gods or Daemons,

don't we know the futures unfolding?

# 1. Of long here was once a glorious world.

# 2. Peace in our lands and the universe to explore.

Against the canvas of green
churning out shades of wet brown,
silhouetted
the late crow atop a streak
of another bow of shadows. Canopy blue
islanded in many shades of grey,

ruddy ruddy grey:
crimson light dancing on the darkening tips
of leaves, still wet after the downpour,
fluttering in the slow wind;

Till you disappear from the edge
of my smudged mirror; Turning back
then, I wait on,
and catching a fading glimpse
of you walking away, for moments more.
Life inverted; Fluttering in wind.

Heavenly angels
that descended into the earth with the rain
burst forth now as the copperpods blooming
late now at season's edge

That at last when the night is
falling asleep, and I hear voices
muffled, concealed
in corners, oh my despair
the day breaks in, like a thief ambling
across, it is morning already...

A drum beat. A distance.

Breaking out of her veils,
a tender morning.
Hum of the winds.

Hanging roots of the banyan.
Emerging out of mists.

After many lives perhaps
a meeting.

I closed all doors and windows
and lie listening to the tired fan.

You have found your way in,
smiling in the leaves
past the grill,
shadowed on the ceiling.

Oh this feeling. That can light
two hearts. To know this,
to know this.

The roots are hanging strong.
Upside down.

Tugging at the heart, the
solitary song
of the early koel.

Mists un-heeding,
sometimes succeeding.