K. V. V. SUBRAHMANYAM
I’m sampler of elfin makes and eerie shades,
Of culinary delight that ne’er fades;
Of recipes of the cuisine of the topmost
grades,
Despite excesses condemning
me to the Hades.
Do we eat to live or live to eat?
The challenge to the poser none can meet;
To answer this sages about the bush do beat,
Perhaps Epicurus and Socrates would have
contended with heat.
Eating and drinking and merry-making
May be for the stoic heart-breaking;
Nor are these achievements earth-shaking,
Our inward unrest we’ll be merry-making.
Epicures are not only of the table,
They may be of many a hue and label;
Readers of book s of verse and fable,
Whom we consider of calling
noble.
The hermit with his meditative pose,
Motionless around him may grow moss;
For whom the ephemeral world is dross,
His inward eye eternally fixed on the cross.
These are then epicures of body, mind and
soul,
For them fullness of effort is the goal;
Before which all mundane matters seem pale,
And shallow successes and vain glories stale.
Toward wafting culinary scent the olfactory
winds,
The beatific cerebrating saint draws the
minds;
Of those in the wave-length he finds,
Like as the sunflower with its kinds myriad.
Human striving is an endless field,
To complaisant air one should never yield,
Lest further advance be sealed,
Till the bell of the doomsday is pealed.