Best Sanctum Sanctorum Poems
Guarded by towering hills on the East
And flanked by the Arabian Sea on the West
With its easterly shore of stretching sandy swell
That lulls the restless waves to sleep,
There is a land, my land of green vegetation
Nestled among palm trees and paddy fields.
Oh! I am in love with this narrow strip of land
Of rugged hills and meandering rivers
Of placid backwaters and blue skies
Of gibbering monkeys and singing cuckoos
What rich diversity you graciously provide
A land dotted with temples, churches and mosques
Where Hindus, Christians and Muslims cohabit
Where diversity flows through her arteries
And unity beats through her throbbing heart
Here souls dance to the timeless rhythm of music
Of diverse genres, vocal and instrumental
Classical and folk, sung either as solo or in groups
With the accompaniment of (2) 'veena',(3) 'tanpura' and violin
Their varying pitches beautifully synchronized!
In the serene dawns and dusky evenings
The atmosphere gets abuzz with the soft strains
Of (1) ‘Sopana Sangeetham’, the ethnic music of Kerala,
It comes floating from inside the Hindu shrines
Flooding soul’s enchanted shores,
And opening the floodgates of piety
In healing murmurs and throbbing notes,
As the symphony builds up its circuitous round
It descends down as a stream of blessing
Drenching devotees in its moistening sweetness
Like the drizzle of dew drops from heaven
Making hearts ride in the palanquin of joy!
May.21.2023
If your Birthplace- Country was a Poem Poetry Contest
Sponsor - Anoucheka Gangabissoon
This poem is about Kerala, a small state in India, which is my birthplace and its geography and culture.
1.Sopana Sangeetham is a form of Indian Classical music, developed in the temples of Kerala. It is sung, sitting by the holy steps leading to the sanctum sanctorum of a shrine.
2.Veena- a stringed musical instrument, one of the oldest of Indian musical tradition, played sitting cross legged, capable of producing all oscillations of Carnatic music
3. Tanpura- a drone instrument of Indian origin used mainly in a concert of classical music, creating a melodic background, but not a melody.
Having conquered death
Soul's eternal home prepared
Sanctum Sanctorum!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
21 April 2019
* HAPPY EASTER TO ALL CHRISTIANS WHO CELEBRATE EASTER TODAY!
The rain-god bursts in Himalaya regions
With snow-covered mountains and deep forests
There’s Kedar temple for Hindu pilgrims
Coming to worship the god in thousands
Sanctum Sanctorum inside the temple
Of Kedar revered by millions of Hindus
A bleak picture of purses, bags and shoes
All personal things lay strewn in ample.
Outside the temple vandals had free hand
Houses, cars and what not flooding in
Thousands of people dead or stranded
Millions waiting to hear about their end
There’s no right or wrong way to cope with pain
Time, can renew and permit you to mend.
==============================
Contest : Grief by Shadow Hamilton
9th place win
The Kedarnath temple, one of the four pilgrimage centre for Hindus world over, is in the Himalayas at the height of 13,500 feet. There was a cloud bursts and then heavy rainfall which was about 375 percent more than the benchmark rainfall during a normal monsoon. It is feared that 20,000 people have died. This happened around 14th to 17th June, 2013. There is a news now that the temple will reopen. On 1st of October i.e. after nearly 95 days. Surprisingly, there is no danger to the idols of the Deity Shiv or Nandi , the bull.
Please visit my blog, if you want to see the video clips on the tragedy
Villanelle: Dare you stain the portals of your deity’s sacrosanct citadel
Dare you stain the portals of your deity’s sacrosanct citadel
Which mortal mammal’s primal address the rapists desecrate
Be not taken aback the yoni passage leads astray linga infidel
Seeds of life ever come tumbling from out the sacred temple
There to greet in meiosis and in secret reverence gestate
Dare you stain the portals of your deity’s sacrosanct citadel
Do heathen women toiling in the dark draw the blinds on hell
And Gorgon heads of demons deep in them shudder vibrate
Be not taken aback the yoni passage leads astray linga infidel
Yet deafening tunnel shrieks of the human species’ s carousel
Re-winds obsessive tinnitus ear-pounding thuds to celebrate
Dare you stain the portals of your deity’s sacrosanct citadel
Who keeps the sanctum sanctorum well-cleansed spiritual
But the defiant procreator linga tireless distending inebriate
Be not taken aback the yoni passage leads astray linga infidel
He who bestial disembowels the temple in a frenzied spell
His own mother disowns and hysteric squats on life’s dictates
Dare you stain the portals of your deity’s sacrosanct citadel
Be not taken aback the yoni passage leads astray linga infidel
© T. Wignesan – Pars, 2014
AQUAMARINE waves kiss the shore as gulls fly overhead.
CRIMSON Geraniums hang in baskets on the porch.
We've planted LAVENDER outside the garden gate for luck,
and lined the driveway with LILAC bushes.
There is a LEMON tree and a TANGERINE tree in the back yard.
They offer shade and luscious fruit.
I don my best CHARTREUSE muumuu and a CORAL necklace and bracelet,
with a SAFFRON colored ribbon in my hair to welcome my guests.
We will sit in the garden and sip WATERMELON wine,
as we discuss my new home and what to do with it.
This will be where I will come to enjoy nature and find peace.
It will be the place where I will come to retire in this quaint little village.
It will be my sanctum sanctorum.
My little house by the sea.
April 14,2021
She lays there stark naked
writhing and moaning on the hot sand
like a sensuous woman in heat,
Her golden tresses weave through the desert
as far north as the eyes can see,
waving like sheik's silken tent in the wind.
A little down south
hidden behind a billowing dune
lies an oasis for the blessed,
like a shrine set in the sanctum sanctorum--
cool, moist and well-lined with palm trees
with a musky fragrance permeating the air,
And a wellspring of fresh, bubbly water
to quench the thirst of weary wayfarers.
~Abdul Malik
~"In the Desert"
~09/15/2014
You might think that I am quite a handful
Failing your expectations at the most
Yet, being there at times which most cruel
Every step of the way, whatever it costs
Nothing to compare, that motherly love
Those scoldings and reminders, straightforward
All for the benefit, stand up on top
And keep on doing so, never gets tired
Having you, a blessing not in disguise
For extending beyond reach, your presence
Unconditional, without any price
My sanctum sanctorum, my eminence
No substitute for a mother like you,
the one treasure at its highest value.
Gods of glowing neon and gaudy screens
smile upon charming, charming patterns of heads.
All colors of hair, lit red, then green, then blue,
guided along invisible paths, crown heads
perspiring, chanting and glancing down
on marching, mechanical arms, then worrying
as they scurry along infinite, crisscrossing paths -
at once so ordered and so unfathomably chaotic.
Drums are rolled by hurrying feet
dictating the race of mankind.
A metropolis looms, adorned by a billion shimmering jewels -
electric jewels - and an apparition sways over the
bustle, silently watching, silently floating.
Giant chutes proudly puff out plumes of nightly black
and devils forged in impure fire do rise
to the heavens above, graced by the blessings of
the industrial revolution, in turn blessing humanity with progress,
imperceptible except as phlegmatic gasps
and the whiff of crisp green paper, distinguished by
wizened faces and packed in neat bundles.
Bulbous, aged fingers do trace from within
the sanctum sanctorum of a temple aged a thousand years,
charming, charming patterns of jewels
in intricate, frozen dance, carving out hexagons of perfect symmetry
from wearily cut marble windowsills.
The work of a thousand splendid hands
preserved by the unseen, dusty hands of time
did render the mosque palatial, its beauty heavenly.
The admiring eyes sing hymns praising the architecture, alas
they are blind, for the marble, white as angelic wings, is grey now.
The scientist appears, eyes hidden by thick glassy cubicles
yet shining through, lit by the endless pursuit of knowledge
and equally burdened by numbers, figures, notes
and the maddening myopia of man.
On the screen appears, against fresh white
charming, charming patterns of red, green and blue
sinking downward, worryingly as it would seem,
his uninflected pleas let in through one ear, instantly
shunted out through the next by the populace, to whom
the music of modernity rings sweeter.
First Place, Charming Patterns Poetry Contest
Date: 16th October 2021
IF YOU PULL A LONG FACE : XLIII– the Embalmed Mona Lisa in the Glass Pyramid
If you pull a long stymied face
Make certain you peel eyes that do not stray
Or else the faces you make will make-up put out-of-place
Yet the legions who march past portrait make for dire prey
If you keep pulling that mock long-pulled enigmatic face
Not even oil on poplar buttressed by beech oak sycamore or maple
Nor butterfly braces lock Mona Lisa’s back-warping brace
Sfumato style phase out smile eyelashes eyebrows from wood panel
If you must pull that long neither nor face
Two faces fused in one while in the family way
Dumbfounded tourists be trampled under divisive gaze
Did not Leonardo cross-eyed dab paint in reverie gay
If you then insist on pulling a long-painted face
Own mocking glances at François 1er’s La Gioconda, nay
Count yourself among millions Lady Gherardini’s to praise
Think of the billions it takes to care for her image and so pay
Yet if you then keep pulling that long-amused face
Watching myriad eyes searching the reasons for your precious sway
Pied-Piper armies come trampling trapped in a momentary craze
The pent-up pilgrims in your glass sanctum-sanctorum catharsis obey
© T. Wignesan – Paris, September 25, 2019
Imagine: hearing the scraping as nails harsh against, their walls
Creche preludes sensing this foreboding; crawling, past these veins ?
Sanctum sanctorum and macabre's, man-of-war his abomination peering
Stepping-stone hallucinations; intuitive marked it's beast ? Ancient's, six'pence....
Monere, a child's eyes prophetic tides omega: hideous, standing where they ought not.
Sitting in the waiting room her sunlit day; complying to their sequence
Amid a foregone conclusion ? Appearing suddenly out of nowhere
Ineffable somehow it seems this, March two thousand twelve's
National Geographic's copy titled, 'The Journey of the Apostles....
Theocracy's last supper sublime; tableaux ? Instinct taking hold slowly
Savoir-faire walking past these doors surely tis for me ? Sanctum sanctorum
Seder thirty years now, gone by ? Why his doctor queried; Angels in the mist hieros.
I awake to beautiful music,
As birds sing sweetly outside my window.
I rise and dress unhurriedly,
And go into the kitchen to prepare my morning tea,
The first of many for it sits easily on my stomach,
And energizes me for the day ahead.
Sweet
Cup in hand I emerge into the garden.
It is early morning and the dew is heavy on the grass and shrubs.
The air is perfumed with the fragrance of flowers.
Bess hum busily among them as the birds continue to serenade me.
I am soothed as my senses awaken,
To the sights and sounds about me.
Sweet
My garden, my sanctum sanctorum,
Where I commune with my God.
I praise Him for His goodness, His mercy and His tender care.
I thank Him for His providence,
And as I pray my spirit surges with new hope and reassurance.
Sweet
I rise and return to the kitchen and place my cup in the sink.
I am soothed, energized, reassured.
I feel stronger, more confident, reborn.
I know that whatever this day may bring,
There is nothing I cannot face,
Nothing I cannot conquer,
As long as I remain standing beside my God.
Sweet
I pray to HIM, the destroyer
Destroying is his purpose singular
He reveals the duplicity of a sleeper
Not in him, the forceful energy of a waker
Yes, I prayed deeply to the destroyer
After I saw the works of the creator
The creator is everywhere and is all-knower
A life-giver but could not make ME a winner.
Destroyer loved but was not a lover
Barely a parent yet a strict father
He bore his stick, He alone could bear life as a householder
The world is a multi-faceted creation
Plurality, infinity, continuity and no end
Nature turned wild and prone to destruction
We created zero and the nuclear weapon
Creation was contained in finite numbers
When numbers don't work go to the network
Family, society, nature all inter-locked
That's when my very personal God set to work
He said to me then
Clear the cobwebs and your cupboard
Turn off the fire in the sanctum sanctorum
Leave me not and look no further
Don't try to put the broken pieces of your life together
Come to my distant sanctuary
Its cold openness beyond the reach of the creator!
There was the hunger
and suicide.
In favor of my brutal truth
or virtue of my failure,
I do not want any comments on my trauma.
Morality has a dubious equation
with power, provoking my anger.
The days were full of abandoned kilns.
No more shaping of containers
in which one can put the moon,
and honey and roses.
Everything was turning brown
with infinite, sulphur smelling teeth
ready to bite into golden flesh.
Convicts behind the walls were playing
with mirrors to throw the light on slick
towers. Death was laughing, waiting on the trees,
eating black berries.
And I was forced to taste the blood of sky
with sodium –
in sanctum sanctorum.
SATISH VERMA
Imagine
you can see
what your ears hear
and they see
what your eyes watch
as you dwell
in the
Sanctum Sanctorum
of prayer
while communing
with The Most High
whose returned gifts
are beyond
all other words
except:
“Halleluiah…Amazing Grace!”