But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from pining –
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary see now flows between; –
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Christabel
Winter has come again
And brought with it its chill
And a whiff of your scent.
Cold evenings on a country road,
The nightqueen’s fragrance in our garden
And the moonlight streaming in though the window:
Distant memories stirred by the wind
Of shared umbrellas in the monsoon,
Autumn leaves falling to the ground
And the relished feel of wool
In a warm country’s winter.
Every road leads me to you
And the sweet pain in which we revelled;
But greater pain it is to know
That these memories are all I have
KISHORE KUMAR
Alexander Dumas’ (pere, 1802-1870) reputed response to a snide comment on his heritage is a rich repartee.
“My father was a mulatto, my grandmother was a negress and my great grandparents were monkeys. My pedigree begins where yours ends”
Lolz
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus
Man is condemned to be free
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
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
The only dream worth having … is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never forget.
ARUNDHATI ROY
- The fulfilment in a silent, wordless prayer.
- The knot in the throat at the moment of separation from someone you
love.- The sweetness of a date after a day’s fasting.
- The lingering humility after giving alms.
- Watching the love of your life sleeping.
- Sitting on top of the tallest buliding in town on a starlit night.
- Holding your six month-old nephew and seeing his fingers curl around
yours.- Sitting up whole days and nights, for years, for the triumph in declaring,
“Eureka!”
KISHORE KUMAR
There are only two ways of living your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by the lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems
SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON
kilroykishore 