If you can not cheat Time by your laughter
Why cheat your wrinkles, dyeing your gray hair?
If you be carefless to care threreafter,
Who care to care about your careless care?
Try talking to your shadow, the land’ll hear
Your secret wafted by the air descried,
So why be a yam-spinner, change, up cheer
The truth of shadow of God at your side.
The walks of life are of different shades;
Choose like the one leading to your dignity;
Missing links of truth whets the doubtful blades,
Cutting sinews of your integrity
Be true to yourself and keep your gray hair
To match well with the wrinkles of your face;
Old age should be revered without despair
Having had a natural touch of grace.
The Break of Dawn
Once the break of dawn o’er our hills was seen
The cock crew the darkness dwindled away
The perching sparrows on the trees had been
Wake-rife to fly and chorus on their way
On the wing rising up they brigaded
Winged shuttles swift in their flight o’er the plain
So admirable were they grey-bladed
Lost in heaven like angels back again.
That was the time of my coffee outside
Sitting alone; under the banyan tree
Nigh the adventitious roots along-side
Hung up soodling to the ground close to me;
The wind through the leaves made a swishing sound
Like snakes in front of gleaners gliding free
I listened well and presumed to have found
That the trees have a breath like you and me;
One quick look at heaven while thinking, I
Thought of creation wondering linkin
Wonder to wonder descried testify
That trees in their wake are reticent thinking.
Of the light spun forest of threads to be
The hued weft of life giving evidence
By the heart of man the pith of a tree
Alike in feed growth pulse and excellence.
That’s why I say and repeat that one day
Trees will tell sister trees to be heart-whole
And sneer at people who often say
That the living trees live without a soul;
Again a cup of coffee and again
The cock crew the birds arched and left away
And I left leaving a memory lane
For them to follow back home on their way.
Rome and John Keats
What were those sad strains of the heart I heard last night;
Would that still be the nightingales along the years;
Are mourning the death of their shepherd who did write
That soulful ode with the ink derived from his tears?
Possessed with the ecstasy of that sound,
I resolved to beat the bounds of this land
And with the gumption of dire Hannibal
I braved the mighty roar
On pilgrimage to the ancient city of Rome.
I wandered around and saw
The remaining relics, shattered stone remains,
Aging patiently and fading against
The blowing winds the pattering rains,
Odl rugged rocks staring haggardly,
Weeping pebbles, the years of yesterday.
Gazing at this fateful sequence
Of emperor empire master and slave,
With their edifice of triumph destroyed,
Would I be the first man to say
That time contains never contained
Having destiny and fate
The hands that give and take
The power that opens at will
Every door and shuts every gate?
Or it’s natural phenomenon,
Keeping whole the complexities of being
Governed and sheltered in a haven of perpetual mystery,
Processing through lanes tactfully designed,
Crossing the fallow of the vast to remain
Ever mysterious and forever its perdurable property.
That’s truly the wondrous tale of time
The years that come going,
Leaving behing colonies of stones,
Masons, philosophers, poets, scholars
Who have quarried the rocks of knowledge,
Built halls of wisdom
Everywhere on the hills of immortality
And then passed to remain
Lingering shadows of their remains
And now I am here, O Rome,
Walking on your hills, losing time gaining age.
One look at the shore;
One step in the grave yard
To kow-tow over the grave keen and pray
For a denizen who in your bosom doth lie
Bones of glory ribs of fame
Keats, O Rome!
The poet, the shepherd of the flocks
Them ever bereft nightingales ever heard,
Utering a continuous flood of moans,
As long as time wheels on,
And they breed new generations to sing
Of him who had a hasty look on time
And left a floating name
On the lake of weeping eyes.