POEMS

K.V. Raghupathi

I

With no secret whisperings of wind

and dilly-dallyings of nimbus clouds

rain-fed nature is now calm and serene.

Sun in the dissipated clouds hobnobbing man’s despair.

The only hope for man is like this thin yellow transparent

light on the portruding swollen hill

that soon vanishes in the dusk.

II

Flames under the neem tree in the fading yellow light

leaping and licking the empty space

As men of sorrow tumbled in furrows to break their long unbroken tedium,

as the just-born evening stars glistened in smiles

it is the black-bellied drongo flitting over the lamp-post,

that said to me in all jeers:

“Your life is brief - like an evening short walk.”

III

Deep down in the bottom sea water is still and serene.

While seagulls flash over the restless waves and tides,

We are like the fish unaware of cheap death on the land.

While the sea shudders in the strong wind,

the moon remains poised and elegant in the dark sky.

What a contrast:

IV

Now the Eastern sky has no validity, nothing

in the fast waning dusk,

So is the Western sky in the fast rising dawn.

Between the two points of time all our sensual wishes

are like the slapping tides on a rock.

VI

Clouded hills stand still like the moored ships

While the two black coucals make series

of deep resonant music in an uneven duet

men in these bustling streets move like

the scarred ants with no concern and love for one another.

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