I read a thought somewhere A thought I thought myself Someone thought it long ago Now it sits on my book shelf. I heard a song on the radio Made from the tears I shed Someone wrote it far away Now it’s stuck in my head. We are made of the same stuff You and I Flesh, blood, tears, sighs Pain, love, fear, lies. SPONSORED: Interested in ways to help people find happiness and live a great life? An online msw degree is for you.
Poetry can truly transcend time and geography, and make you believe in the equivalent of a fairy tale for adults; a kind of serene, beautiful existence where words can smell, touch, smile and cry. The Street: Octavio Paz A long and silent street. I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall and rise, and I walk blind, my feet stepping on silent stones and dry leaves. Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves: if I slow down, he slows: if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody. Everything dark and doorless. Turning and turning among these corners which lead forever to the street where I pursue a man who stumbles and rises and says when he sees me: nobody [Original: La calle] Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my …
Today marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and continues to send shivers down the spines of those that dare to reminisce. 64 years later, the world is still a cradle of hatred, cruelty and destruction. Although we probably had our first tryst with World War II in 6th grade history textbooks, I deeply encountered the implications of war, weapons & death only in 9th grade literature. It tragically transformed historical numbers, facts and figures into real people, emotions and scars. A doctor’s journal entry for August 6, 1945 – Vikram Seth The morning stretched calm, beautiful, and warm. Sprawling half clad, I gazed out at the form Of shimmering leaves and shadows. Suddenly A strong flash, then another, startled me. I saw the old stone lantern brightly lit. Magnesium flares? While I debated it, The roof, the walls and, as it seemed, the world Collapsed in timber and debris, dust swirled Around me – in the garden now – and, weird, My drawers and undershirt disappeared. A splinter jutted from my mangled thigh. …
While reading The Motorycle Diaries, I came across this hauntingly beautiful poem written by Otero Silva, a Venezuelan poet and novelist born in 1908: I heard splashing on the boat her bare feet And sensed in our faces the hungry dusk My heart swaying between her and the street, the road I don’t know where I found the strength to free myself from her eyes to slip from her arms She stayed, crying through rain and glass clouded with grief and tears She stayed, unable to cry Wait! I will come walking with you.
This happened in the summer of 2007, when all I wanted to do was lie under the mango tree in the backyard of my house, and make patterns in my head by tracing out the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds, visible through the small peep-holes made by the leaves of the mango tree. It was still a fortnight and a rain shower before the first batch of mangos would be magically transformed from raw green to the color of the sun whose rays they bathed in day after day. It wasn’t a particularly hot or dry summer. I spent many an evening sprawling under the voluminous mango tree, listening to the evening cries of birds that nested in my backyard, watching the leaves dance in the occasional breeze, toying with infinite thoughts about our universe. On one such daily dates with nature, when the birds hadn’t yet started chirping, the silence of the evening was broken by my pet dog howling in the distance. His pitch would rise and fall, but …
She walks the lone road, Silence stinging her senses Like a cold wind would sting Her bare skin, But the night is still And dark, and the sky is dark, Embracing the dainty arch Of the new born moon, As though it were created to protect The moon alone, and nothing below, And no stars shone Upon the silence of the night. She walks past a house masked By dull peeling white, the smell Of rust, and autumn in sight In a garden, brown and bare. She walks through the night Till she reaches the end Of her road, the end of all life, And peers through the sky above At the morning light, at the first rays Of the rising sun. A new horizon?
Somewhere up above Beyond the clouds, the stars, the skies Somewhere up above A magnificient creation lies All-knowing, all-powerful, forgiving and fair In the human mind The darkness is protected by the blue With infinite imagination.
