I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
                                          Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

    The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

Where shall I roam in search of mine most desire
To rove distances till all of Earth I have dolven
Deep ravines, summits, seas, caverns...
Wilt I then obtain mine desire
For if to see in whole existence, how sooth canst any covet proclaim
It is holo, I myself so too hollow
Whereof dost I live for - to request for not life and so life to not request me
Of whom hath left me here to crave, to lust
I am fainéant...
Yet I wander, in vitality
...in appetency.

(all titles available on Lulu)


~



from The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake - Sept 2013, 211 pages, 10.00


the recidivist

I can overhear myself relating to an older brother the eerie feeling I had when jogging past an abandoned shoe factory.  I am more nervous than I think I am and can sense brother’s multilayered disappointment in all things prime.  it’s my stutter surprises me the most.  as if it knows, beforehand, things will never be the same.  once a coward, once is enough.  born in a place that feared me.        


within hail

     the flashlight works if you shake it.  this tree is the tree you should use.  every other home is broken.  every other window has in it my house arrested father.  the dog run off, the dog come back.  back with a beauty I will bed to babysit my brother.  the crow is empty.  a plaything, a part of the show.  crow can be blindfold, camera.  can censor among other things an exposed breast.  the fence wasn’t here when we got here so it’s not here now.  an uncle says there is a dog only he can hear.  will say anything to get laid.  in all fairness I’ve failed more than once to insert myself into the loneliness of my person.


a country

i.

I approach the dream as if I'm asleep
the answers written on my hand

ii.

I stick out my tongue
at the mid
born

baby

iii.

I raise awareness by praying
you go through
my exact
hell

iv.

I see myself as my son
writing to his father
about deformities

v.

in a crowd of soldiers
my daughter's head
bobs up and down

as if passed around
on a stick

vi.

it takes an army to imagine
only one thing


assistance

from the boy

(on the soon to be
exact
date
our poverty
matures)

this ballpark
statement:

I did not ask to be born.

     he wants the names
of those
I’ve told.

~

from father, footrace, fistfight - June 2014, 177 pages, 10.00


the gentle detail

in the time it took
his daughter
to soap
her brother’s
cradle cap

the man
was able
to lose
an entire hand.

every now
and now
he corrects me
with a puppet.

there is no place
where nothing should be.


lift

my mother steps on a wooden block
with both feet.

stepping off,
she announces
she is going
on a diet.

my father covers his ears
and gets shaving cream
on them.

he turns me in his hands
like a dish towel
then drops me
at the base of the tree.

I transport
god’s blood
on three
disposable
razors

to my neighbor
who

on a high shelf
has a microscope.


deep still

ghost of snake.  

an adoration
of atypical
young mother
fear.  

mouse needs a toothache.

footwork
heads north.


1998-2014

ideas
are the sickness
health
provides.

thoughts
are two sons
for a jesus
whose fathers

one heavenly, one earthly

never had
to touch
a woman.

the pain is not tremendous.

lo it has kept me
from hurting
my kids.

~

from The Women You Take From Your Brother - Aug 2014, 351 pages, 18.00


joy and joy alone

I broke the boy on my knee because I needed a switch. we ran around an empty crib. I let him catch a breath and he let me kneel. we tiptoed in a manner of mocking past private make-up to which his mother had been softly applied. he drank tea from an eggshell and I declined. I swatted him to let him know I was dying. his bent sister fell asleep and the boy was kind enough to believe her hair was a nightgown. I swatted him again to let him know I would live. the tea was gone. the rest is sadness.


being

a man my mother knows
only in passing
is reading a library book
in the dugout
of his dead
child’s
home
field
while his wife
rounds the bases
pushing
a stray dog
in a grocery cart.

at the dinner table
father says
we’re fasting
in a world
of spirits.

~

from Misreckon - Dec 2014, 115 pages, 9.00


clear heads

while smoking a cigar in the shadow of a nervous minotaur, my father wrote the book on moral isolation. in it, he predicted there would be a television show about hoarders and that it would turn god into a sign from god. my mother read the book cover to cover during her fourth and fastest delivery. if there were edits, she kept them to herself and put his name beside hers on seasonally produced slim volumes of absolute shyness.


untitled (ii)

afraid of my sons, I was born scared.  to my friend of few words I say

a few
words

on how a newborn looks like an undiscovered

fish
fresh
from ghosting
the underfunded
aquariums
of rapes

that occur.  at some point
I’ll tell my daughter

we’ve met.  my father

when he comes
comes

from another
dimension
to bear hug
our dinner guest
who’s arrived
in a mirror.  

mother puts a gun to her foot.


end psalm

god had an earache and I heard thunder. I learned to shrink into the smallness of my brain. I associated money with my father’s funny bone. my mother with the dual church of hide and seek. I went on to have a son with special needs. he cried once. cried milk.

~

from Eating the Animal Back to Life - July 2015, 316 pages, 10.00


off night

when what we thought
had entered
our father
left

we used him
as an alarm

god is coming
and mom
is vacuuming
stones


neglect

it didn’t take long for the frog to become real to those around me. some would bring it back and pat me on the head and some would laugh when I told them it’d never tried to hop away before. some would say it was the frog that was depressed and some would pray for the frog I was lucky to have. when it began to speak, I told myself that’s just how frogs talk. god came to me sooner than most. mom joked that he must’ve known I had a frog to get back to. my sister maintains to this day she had no intention of eating the frog as she was only trying to impress the snake her eyes were made for. by the time I woke her up, her hunger had ballooned and she leapt at me the odd leap of grief.


contact high

it gets so you can’t throw a rock without having a baby. not all of us talk this way but you have to hand something to the ones that do. I’ve seen voodoo dolls with more personality. had my mother’s god been my father’s, I would’ve gone blind from staring at my birth.


themes for country

I am at the truck
getting ice cream
for the overly
nostalgic
girl
who refused
to cut through
the cemetery

~

from Drone & Chickenhouse - Oct 2015, 84 pages, 6.00


chaos

brother drinks water enough to shock the devil. on the inside, he’s all doll. I shake him for show might our sisters travel in pairs. I used to talk but had to close my mouth when the soft spot on his head kept my mother from her toes. it’s the second stone that really lands.


deep scene

speech itself is a failed translation

dreaming is a farm

a mother
makes it as far
as mailbox

bear
to fish
there’s water
in the water

is, today’s mousetrap
tomorrow’s

shoe


language

word gets around
the schoolyard
pretty quick
that my father
drove his body
off a cliff
so god
would have a nail
hot enough
to touch.

I have a tooth
can make it
snow.

It was by our old garage door
beneath a spot long favored by birds
to build nests of mud and string.
The neighbor’s cat had not yet found it,
though by dusk its deathbed would be
merely flattened grass and a tuft of down.

Perhaps I had seen this one
the day before, its head turned skyward,
beak gaping in a torment of appetency.

It was a juvenile—
not long expired, I knew,
one black eye neither open nor closed,
but stilled in that way
the dead gaze without seeing.

Its plumage was nearly complete:
the tell-tale russet breast,
the mottled gray.
So near to taking its perilous leap—
one unforgiving day, or maybe two,
had been the space between
flight and fall.

This was a lovely work of feather and flesh,
an inchoate beauty,
its pinions and bristles nearly made.

I nudged it with my boot
and glimpsed beneath the wing
a naked leg and trident foot—
all reptile scale and claw.

With less than a thought,
I let the thing roll back
upon itself, wing upon leg,
to await the coming
of the marauding cat.

I've spent many nights
Mind spinning with thoughts
Twisted illusions take the place
Of my hopes of a restful sleep
The lessons
I have learned 
from all the wrong I've done 
Should be enough
To satisfy my appetency 
There have been days
I've wavered in and out of faith
But selfishly I still sit and pray
And when I get what I desire
I don't long for it anymore
And now I am left to sit and ponder
In the twisted mind of a stranger.

●●●
unconditional..
love follows...
it's own set of rules....

whatever be the..
decisions, accepted...
wholeheartedly....

appetency..
such passionateness...
blessed by the divinity...

don't say it..
simply love...
this is true idolatry....
●●●
©deovrat 24-06-2018

To the awaited vineyard—as shaky lips are no more.
A taste of Devine; desirable passion burning as a fierce
fire. —As like my God, who has consumed my bare heart
of ravaging love.

My hungry eyes, burn eternal for my spouse.
As like ten million stars—so bright; I am blinded by love.
It is young, and untamed. As the mighty steed, wanting to
seed mates. Love is wild; but under the one you truly love,
shall it be tamed.

Shall your ears quake at the voice of your love— as your
lips call their name. It will be as the flower, twisting itself
towards the glory light. As the appetency of waters, the
nurturing and care. I pray where you set your dreams, your
love be there.

May the shape of their love be pleasing in your eyes.
As the romances be anew, of a new experiences night.
Prize them as something you could never afford, care for
them as the only you hold. Bring them up as righteous,
and blameless to the Lord. Pure and untainted —speak to
their ear the beauty of His Word.

I entreat to all. Love your beloved, as Christ loved the church.
I entreat to all. Respect your beloved, as they see you of your
worth.

Your eyes seems to twinkle when you look at me
Your voice seems to be a music to my deaf ears
And I could just listen to it through the years
Just like what I want my future to be
But the thought of you and me is like waiting for expiry
When I know that you'd just cause my tears
To fall and only mourn is all what I hears
This affection between us will remain as appetency
If letting go is the right thing, I'll bet
Maybe being apart from you is what I should do
Perhaps time will come and I'll forget
The almost happily every after of me and you
Time heals, Time will heal the past
It will slowly fade just like a dust

I imagine myself locked in a confessional, etching his name into the wood and striking matches against my skin to light one votive candle for each day that i have ever loved him. I breathe in the smoke when i am finished. When I say his name, it sounds like a sin.

My blood moves like thick molasses when I wake up. They say that the best way to attract the things that you want is to avoid thinking about them altogether. I start by deleting pictures of him from my phone. The pressure of my finger on the glass shatters the screen.

His bed was never big enough for the both of us. I turn away from him and he turns towards me - I turn back to face him and he shifts away, a constant revolving door of fleeting affection. It was never tender. His gaze was non-committal, but intense. We never spoke about it.

It always felt like practice.

When I finally face the wicked witch she sings to me a soothing lullaby, speaks in sonnets that contradict the lore about her. She asks for my truth and I give her a blank stare and hear myself say that it feels like my bones are on fire but nobody can smell the smoke. I am healing, but I am healing the way a broken bone does when it goes untreated for a while. Crooked, wrong. She buys me another drink and reminds me that even Persephone didn’t know better than to fall into the hands of Hades.

I still see him in the ashes.

Prose for my appeasing days!

O divinely botheration!
My sanguineness is constantly entranced
by your divinizing providence.
The brimming merriment shines with
your blessings of perceiving intuitiveness.

You are the emanating joy of pureness.
The nevertheless decidedly appetency
wants to remain closer to you.

O feeling of love!
O question of love!
O emotional and psychological strength!!!
Come through the actual song and set me free!
©️shivpoetesspriya