Silence
Let me first tell you my name
Then whisper where I came from
Don’t be alarmed if I name
An errand you’d like to run from.
Some mistakenly call me silence
Others absence of sound
I am neither soundless nor silent
So who am I to make a sound?
I’m not without speech, music flows inside me
Plunging frog-like I move sometimes
or like a glow-worm turn on and off
My burners at other times.
I am silence yet I speak
Peaceful yet in motion
Scurrying and slithering are also my-speak
This my secret I reveal to you in and out of motion.
I live in utter silence, silence
That even the sprouting sword-tipped grass cannot equal
Gloom inside the bramble under the tamarind or pipal tree
Is not half as dark as me.
See where I stand or lie at ease
Choosing ruins to live and be
Under ground and on it
Up and along the fortress walls
Where legends and hearsay keep a tight watch.
Do not fear (is any place without it?)
Only one thing is true
People who walked here once shuffled their mortal coils
Never again to taste life’s brew.
In days gone by lived a princess here
History throws no light on her anywhere
Smitten by a lovesick man
Whose requited love was her only crime
Here he sat on steps down to the river-bank
In rubble now
Singing day after day
Till he departed God knows what day.
Come evening the Princess stood at her palace window
And hummed his songs
He appeared and sang to the tunes of his flute
While the Princess coyly danced to his toot.
One day the Prince caught her in the act
Suspicion led to jealousy
Princess he thundered
Are you making a cuckold of me?
Prince, call back my mad lover
I too am mad, forget me
Haven’t slept a wink in so many nights
Ask him to play his reed
And sing me into a quiet sleep indeed.
He was a royal prince jokes apart
Her answer was no answer to his royal part
Princess had spoken as if his kingdom had no jail.
Where you stand the Princess’ tender body swung
And such was the fate of her mad lover from the walls flung
The Prince satisfied
Said the Princess was foolish and mistaken.
The Prince since has not known a day of joy
The palace walls echo and re-echo the man’s songs
And in between the Princess’ scornful laugh rings
Prince you are foolish and mistaken.
Years went by
The Prince too quit life’s stage bye and bye
Leaving these palace rooms forlorn.
That’s when in I sneak
With friends to play there hide-n-seek
But from time to time the brainsick lover returns
To sing and weep over his Princess in turns.
It is then my friends
The owl and snake and chameleon
Go eerie silent, my friends.
**
Poverty of Words
Poverty of words my own
I know
Meaning they carry twiddle-thumb
But uttering them is neither futile nor on the bum
Mouthing them brings serenity
Poverty of words my own
I know
Forgetting things close by and all around
Swinging back and forth, all the world round
A child is gathering pebbles by the river bank
Poverty of words my own
I know
Pebbles unique and strange
Blue, red, rainbow and yellow
A child’s own arrangement
According to its skill and preferment
Poverty of words my own
I know
Sound of footsteps nearby
Prompting daily a new arrangement
Poverty of words my own
I know
Knitting words
Picking pebbles
Do not deserve any distinction
Nor must it come for discrimination
Poverty of words my own
I know
Only habit and nature
Passion for picking
Keeps one alive and kicking
And urge for life compounding
Poverty of words my own
I know
**
Four Crows Urf Four Demons
(Written during the 1975-77 emergency of Indira Gandhi)
Only four black crows just that many
Decided all winged beings however many
Must eat sing fly stop like them
What they alone festivity call better suit the rest of them
A magical wind blows through the world sometimes
When all virtues seem a halo around demons at times
As these four crows crowned themselves in glory
Their servants became eagles, hawks and kites, bloody and gory
Swan, peacock, sparrow what do the crows care
Stand with folded hands unable to dare
Order is given, cuckoos must not piu-piu repeat
Instead kaw-kaw sing on every beat
Countless chores from sparrows are demanded
Eat drink and make merry from yes men expected
They came into their own with both hands in the cookie jar
They dreamed big dreams with no par
Even changed the rules for flying
Grounding all the winged creatures as good as dying
What happened next
Is difficult to tell or text
This isn’t the poet’s, but the crows’ day
If you’re curious what happened day after day
Come inside
A long story in short
Cannot be told outside
****
Palas (or Flame of the Forest)
By Yashoda N Singh
Pic:
Thick and sentinel-like
Its sapwood eating into the crannies
Of a crumbling brick wall
A palas tree grew
Irregular, rough and hard
Cobwebbed with parasite shoots and roots.
Climbing to the roof top
The day so frosty crisp and sunny
Suddenly there it was having shed its green leaves
In full flower.
Tongues lolling velvet red, yellow, and black
Against the blue of the sky
A vision of heaven in a palas flower
Soon to shrivel, die and fall in a shower.
*******
Dr. Yashodanandan Singh retired as a technical writer and business analyst in the software industry in U.S.A. in 2015. After earning his M.A. in English from Delhi University, Ph.D. in English from Loyola University of Chicago, and an Associate degree in Computer Science at a local college, he taught English at college level for ten years before moving into computers.
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