Ode to the Moon

I wrote this poem a little after reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It is a quasi-mystical argument against the central argument of the Rubaiyat. In this, I try and speak about the splendour and vanity of human life. This poem is in quatrains, in the style of Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat. Complete with iambic pentameter and a a b a rhyme.

This first part deals with war.

Look down to us, O celestial Angel
From your high seat in heaven where you dwell,
You witness our lives pass under the clouds
Touching, as we pass by, heaven and hell

Imprinted forever on your memory
Is our spent shame-faced and blood-drenched history
For you have seen us tremble, rise and fall;
Play in the cruel hands of fate, sans pity!

With passion and zeal we’ve traversed our time,
And heard for generations the same bells chime:
The gongs of war and the bells of a church
Sound from the same lands of piety and crime

With deep fervour we have loved and betrayed
And with crude sweet hunger our kin have slayed
Alas for human soul that fate has conned:
That very soul that for mercy has prayed

In blood and tears is man’s great epic soaked
In emotions unknown is man’s soul cloaked;
And you have seen, in the cold of the night,
Where roamed man for the key to the door locked

Far and wide have we strayed on our journey
And left the shown path in vain blasphemy;
In haste we run, O so far from Eden,
’til Heaven laments, for Man’s Vanity

You watch, in the ceaseless divine Drama,
Actors come and go, play with charisma;
Of great Cosmic Order does your tale speak,
But nothing, perhaps, like human trauma

Whatever story that history speaks of
Whatever tale that makes us weep or laugh,
Reveals the mystery of human nature
Which we, for our frailty, dare not speak of

No blood was shed in vain, no tears wasted
For every lost drop was a victory tasted:
Not at battle but at a greater ground
Called wisdom from the follies of the rested

Under your serene vision have we passed
Striving as we might, for Wisdom to last
Yet that immensity does man elude,
That to which we would submit, and thus, last

Any disgrace that we may hope to find
Is a vain war against the cords that bind
The Universe in its Cosmic Order
And hence is perfectly moulded mankind

To those absolute laws that govern thy motion
And those that permeate the whole of creation,
– Do we pay obeisance
For that moment of Infinite Justice we wait
To feel the love of our Lord beyond the Great Gate
– Who is all, above all.

KISHORE KUMAR