'Twas not the sin of sloth the Visigoth
rained down on Rome: the bitter taste of Gaul.
By moral indolence, His passions wroth.
Care lacked, and inward rot presaged their fall.
----------
for the Sin of Sloth Poetry Contest
sponsored by Margarita Lillico
written on 07/02/2022
Those Who...
Those who are presaged to selflessly save innocent life
Are impervious against inequity and of inhumane strife
Those who endeavor unraveling the mysteries of space
Are tireless in pondering the genesis of the human race
Those who venerate indomitable spirit ascending above
Are ever reminded of the authenticity and virtue of love
07/11/2014
Aboard cruise liner:
Splendour Of the Seas
^
A Gealic Song
Gneiss.
Ancient.
Vying with Earth herself for the Crown of Age.
In the Hebrides
Lie the Stones of Calanais
Stubborn chthonic deities of a common past
Rising up and standing against all.
You
More than a beautiful metaphor
Of what I have seen forged in that deep, deep heart;
A heart deep as the songs of Burns on thistle
Or lilting starlings in murmuration ---
Fluid patterns emerging and re-forming.
Such speed at odds with those silent Stones
The Stones of Calanais
The monuments to time
Birthed in an altogether different aeon
Which presaged your very strength
In adumbrated timelessness...
Burnished equipoise in the craftsman's hand.
I cannot move thee
But I can embrace thee
My Gaelic love---
The strength of woman is you
The gift of love you gave
Sits in me like those magic Stones
Rising from our mutual earth
Stretching towards infinite stars.
Were there of night sufficiency to hold
its chambers shielded from all predators
of mind that thrust into those walls
(as she will thrust into her own)
with reasoned words,
though she would stay them with a love
transcending seasoned swords until,
invading her last sanctuary with larksong,
day asserts its cruelty
and moonlight, vanquished, vanishes—
then Romeo would live, and lovers lose
forever that they gained on Juliet's watch.
Then what of tragedy would mold
an intellect, would steal from history's
raw fire and feed compassion...take desire
and form a noble sacrifice?
Could we have known the power
of hopeless tears to change diversion
into art....to touch in our humanity
a flow of the divine?
I tend to think a night presaged
effulgent day on Juliet's watch.
Had we not heard her laughter,
watched her weep,
what would become of us?
Had not we stood around that wooden stage
400 years ago and felt within
a martyrdom that
only saints and prophets knew
would we too, laugh and cry
and treasure that within our hearts?
Perhaps. I think, though, not so much
as we do now, because of what we saw
on Juliet's watch.
~
When I started to write this rhyme
I thought that this very instant
Was my own, precious time
My presaged, peculiar moment
Maybe I was in my prime
Perhaps it was my promised minute
But the feeling was so sublime
That I would remember it forever
Again I scare myself
of the very thing.
Moon was landing on lake
for inward probe.
One presaged silence,
speaks, of the veracity of lovers
to grass, where no drop drives a sun,
the red bricks build a shade.
Ragweed in a daisy field :
Ambrosia, I will not taste you
till the rainbow sits
in the meadow.
Round eyes
keep the dawn hidden /
under the lashes, sleep my saint
for a while, door was waiting for a knock.
SATISH VERMA
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