Remembering a May day

Then all gone in an hour
leaving silence and naught
transfixed
behind.

———

There and then, it was all about movement–

Music is, in the first place, movement

Joy in the movement.

Something mysteriously happened on the way –

Mirrors appeared.

Is it really that mysterious?

The moment our ancestors gathered around a fire

The moment we learned that capital letter

Paradise Lost.

———

Out of Africa, marched on

To conquer the earth

But how many had to yield for us to rise?

True, we can unearth bones and even features crystalized in eons

But how would we recreate the moments

That first drop of life, so vague, with mere potentials

Became a free-moving being;

The last sea ammonite swimming in the ocean;

A dinosaur’s bright feather launched a bird to the thin air;

The handsome Neanderthals vanished forever from our side?

———

A child is born; sun rises

His fresh eyes open up to an ocean of light

The mother gently guides him

to some brushstrokes on Cezanne’s canvas

There and then, we begin to take in structures

Arrange them and rearrange them

And we go on to construct systems after systems

Playing Das Glasperlenspiel…

 ———

Something else is born with him, slyly peeping

Even when the child’s soothed by a sweet lullaby

Some wires gradually tighten within

The world shrinks

A wound starts to grow

But we can no longer be healed in pure movements.

Therefore, we search for cure in other things–

Plant of Heartbeat, Pool of Nectar, some Pure Gold…

———

And we try to overcome it–  

We give birth to children

Construct houses and plant trees around them

We set out to fell cedars on Mount Lebanon

And marvel at the brick walls, cities, towers we build

We read Prince Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth…

(Ah all has been said and told, elegantly and intelligently!)

———

You see, everything gained costs something.

———

We can practice catching leaves in the fall winds

Riding the tips of ocean waves with a smile

Even lifting and closing our heart’s curtain

But how could we practice something

That is only allowed for one chance?

And how many times one needs to listen

To that myth of lament for Linos

To become truly detached from it?

———

(To be a rainmaker, a yogi master, or a priest

Is, however, an entirely different matter

That is up to you.)                                                   

———

But life cannot care for the pathos of some humans

Who are inclined to sing for fallen spring flowers

Once emerged, it has forged ahead

Triumphs and finds its eternity

In eternal successions –

Not only those of individuals

But also of species

All will be gone

And all will be recreated again, and again.

———

If this life could have been ragged claws

That scuttle across silent ocean floors

Sleeping seaweeds, or a laurel in darker green

It is surely not for some notion of happiness

Barely felt already expires

Not for greatness

Which only genius could possibly attain

———

Still there are some geysers somewhere

I have to attend to

They send out columns of water

With vitality not force           

To a rhythm of their own

In forms that change, and surprise me.

———

I think Krishna is in there with them

Dancing on Kalia’s hood

I hear his laughter–

The kind of laughter children have

And his flute.