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Prabhu Iyer Nov 2013
Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
Folk come from far and near, just to hear:
say some a Rabbi is he, others, the Christ;
quelling the ghosts, he turns water wine,
the dead walk back to life at his command.

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
He's cast his glance wide, this humble
son of a carpenter, is too, a fisherman wise:
he pours forth his love, like none ever can,
to his disciples, he's a friend and kinsman.

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
Where they see sin, he only sees the light,
and nothing can anger him but unholy
commerce in the temple right. Who'd have
thought, God's son, was thus in our sight?

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
Christmas has arrived a bit early here :)
Prabhu Iyer Nov 2013
In the stark valley,
by wheezing winds,
eyes puckered,
hope, gone afar:

solitary peaks

snow-capped at
summit, rising,
parting the clouds,
for opal skies.

An aspiration.
A lighthouse.
This 'picture poem' was spurred by a conversation with Victoria, on the appreciation of the vast and the bare in art...

Incidentally, the words 'gone afar' have a hallowed meaning in Mahayana Buddhisn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bh%C5%ABmi_(Buddhism)#The_seventh_bh.C5.ABmi.2C_the_Gone_Afar
Prabhu Iyer Nov 2013
Floating on restless waters, tonight,
broken moons breathe in waving clouds;
Time is a colander, through which
life escapes, never to return; Yet tonight
the beanstalk remains tangled;
I sat watching swans in the moonlight
where the canal and stream met;
Rock the boat! Peace is a botheration.
Could the road that diverged loop
back to the fork? Walking backwards,
tonight, leaves and assorted bits of paper
fly forward; After the off-licenses close,
someone's dashing for the last bus
before dawn, running in reverse; three
hooded figures lost in the cemetery,
walking backwards; The moon
weeps tears of mist, that
ripple spreading inward in the puddles
after the rain; There's a weeping firefly
crawling in the sink; Or the kitchen-lamp?
Bubbles die to the siren-song of crickets.
Is there is an Ithaca fabled?
Prabhu Iyer Nov 2013
One-sidedly decided arrows,
vacillating ellipses;
equilaterally considered triangles,
biased Isosceles;
worlds, whorls, rectangled
squares, afflicted rhombuses;
A self-destructing nova.

The night opens up,
a book of wonders across the sky,
shining in the stars; broken moon;
Wading across ancient expanse.
Flashes of illumination:
lighted mountain bush,
cross rising on the eastern sky;

One look at the visage,
blooming out of this figure
wrapped creeper-like around faint
sight, flower emerging in silver light
out of the shadows: bubbles,
rolling, nonagular, collapsing;
Oh pointless ratiocination!
Have you experienced the intense churning we sometimes face, considerations of so many angles and view-points rising like bubbles in us, confusing and confounding us? And then the answer - that was always there, just we never noticed it, love blooming silent, at the edges of life?

This poem is an ekphrastic reaction to Kadinsky's 'Composition VIII': a fascinating art work, you can view it here: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/kandinsky.comp-8.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis
Prabhu Iyer Oct 2013
Now we are past the age
where fireworks make sense, when,
colours and sparkles mesmerize.

Let us sit down, friend,
and reminisce the wonder nights:
when the moon came visiting
and stood silent by the palm leaves,
the still leaves sang a song
to the passing winds
to the rhythm of dripping dew.

Everything is finished in a moment
here, like the sparkle-***.

Ages pass before we see,
the whirl that follows
in the wake of the Catherine-wheel
of time is in our eye.

Yet a night comes, lit by rows
of joyous lamps, when of long
lost, our soul returns.

That which we sought in objects vain
is forever our own, enshrined
forever behind the throb of sensation
here, is our undefeated kingdom,
closer than the closest.
Greetings to all for a very happy Diwali!

This is the day when the ancient hero Rama (symbolic of Divine Grace) returns to his capital 'Ayodhya'  ('the undefeated' in Skt), after winning back his wife Sita (the individual self), taken captive by the 10-headed ogre Ravana (symbolic of the ten-sided nature of sensory delusion).

It is celebrated by lighting rows of small oil-lamps in all homes and altars, and the display of fireworks, chief among which, are the sparkle-*** and the Catherine-wheel, both favourites of children!
Prabhu Iyer Oct 2013
I walked with the hundreds
climbing mountain trails all day
and settling by the pebbles
at the summit, to hear you:

I, for one, never doubted
there was any scarcity of food;
Yes, you were always
a miracle worker.

On nights of wonder, you
spoke to us in secret on
marvelous things.
Actually, I did not care:

Whose grace floods the desert
and in whose law, love precedes,
such a one was with us and that was
all that mattered.

And now, by moonless nights,
when I stay up, alone and orphaned,
in struggle and privation,
I wonder, my friend, why is your

coming again set in the future?
Do you not come for love alone
than to keep the law? Do you
not part waters for our deliverance?
Prabhu Iyer Oct 2013
Naive waves keep reaching for the oars:
who will explain to them, the rover is gone;
The empty vessel sways from side to side
in wheezing evening winds.

On moonlit nights of silken silences,
atop misty hills overlooking the waters
at Nepenthe's, a dreamed-up reverie.

After the dawn, the night lingers on;
In the darkened room, hiding in corners ,
and dying in the emptying space
hugged between the arms.

Yet, when snow covered everything, and
the clock ticked timeless, a throb enshrined
in the heart of the stalled heart of time,

of those many years ago, carries on.
Nepenthe (http://www.nepenthebigsur.com/) is a restaurant perched amid unbelievable beauty and charm among the hills and by the sea, in the Big Sur national park, California, USA. Something reminded me of the night I was there many years ago...`

Of course, the word 'nepenthe' in English also refers to a drink that brings forgetfulness of sorrow or pain, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nepenthe
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