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Madathil Nair Poem
I have seen you flash by
Amidst thick green foliage and swaying pines
Like a distant silver dream
On receding skyline
But was never satisfied
For a close encounter I craved
I did then go up
The Space Needle in Seattle
Hoping to have a clear view
Of your snow-clad balding pate
That thought profound thoughts
Against mortal blues of the empty sky
But, alas, you remained
Elusive to sight
Hiding behind shifting clouds
Yesterday, I drove over a hundred miles
Climbed my way to Sunrise Point
Hoping for a close tete-a-tete
You played truant again
I saw a blank
Of nothingness, void
A grey screen of clouds and mist
As snow-flakes flew around
The board before me read
You were somewhere there
Amidst mighty peaks
Right before my unseeing eyes
Doesn't matter Rainier
You are there, I know for sure
Like the Himalayan peaks
I haven't seen
And yet am charmed by their beauty
On calendars, picture-cards
Inherent philosophy
Their height and grandeur speak
Better luck next time
Rainier, you are a teacher
I have now seen
Lofty nothingness, void
Against which I have all the peaks
Of the world that speak
Of Truth that belongs not to things
But to an evanescent dream
That the Lord, whoever He is
Conjures up for stupid minds
Copyright © Madathil Nair | Year Posted 2022
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Madathil Nair Poem
A road trip through the Pacific West,
from Seattle along Sequim,
Ocean Shore, Seaside,
all the way to San Francisco.
The Pacific roared beside.
Frequent signs warned of Tsunami hazard.
While a warning at a trinket shop
showed an evacuation route,
an ice cream ad promised a tsunami of delight.
People thronged the beaches en route,
least worried, all in mirth;
a gigantic tide was last on their list.
At Ocean Shore, a man and woman stood in tight embrace,
the lady sobbing without respite,
a personal tsunami on the heave,
wreaking havoc on their aching psyche.
The Pacific just looked on beside.
Humanity seemed a cluster of ants
on the rim of a tea cup left under a tap
savouring their last greedy grabs,
weeping over what is not.
The tap looks down upon.
Yet, away, unknown to them
two superpowers were locked
in an eye-ball confrontation
over things of least real concern
portending a nuclear conflagration.
Lo, the Pacific stands for peace
as her name really means,
while men portend real nemesis,
their own apocalypse.
Copyright © Madathil Nair | Year Posted 2022
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Details |
Madathil Nair Poem
Last night I watched the movie “Nang Nak”;
the hero returns home after a war,
lives with the ghosts of his wife and child,
unaware they had perished while he was afar.
And then, when I turned around,
I saw only ghosts abound,
non-real beings, planets, stars,
all that my universe bore,
and, at last, my body and thoughts,
dancing apparitions in swirls,
frenzied dervishes in whirls.
I prayed at the feet of the Buddha,
bewildered by spectral samsara.
Did He smile at last
or a non-real thought that was?
Or does it matter at all?
That I know is proof after all
That I exist to validate
real, unreal, non-real,
like a glow that reveals,
self-iridescence concealed.
And here I lie now erased
of a body, mind and the seen,
a void that has everything
sans forms and names,
and yet the fullest thing,
the Buddha in everything.
Copyright © Madathil Nair | Year Posted 2022
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