My Country - My People
( Modern Indian Epic)
CANTO 11
The lilies open their lips only to speak of you, the leaves whisper in my ears, your craving for me.
I spend nights without sleep, staring at the starry skies, with my heart torn, between you and my people. My eyes carry you and my nation, as two candles in search of my island of hopes; where my people wander on the sandy beaches in gay abandon, tear the flesh of fruits with their teeth and prowl like beautiful wild animals.
Where I the storm, fled away from the oceans take shelter in the coconut groves of your bosom
Where, my nation, surges like a wave of the sea which does not carry the load of ships, where the morning ray does not stab and kill the population of dreams of my people, where I spread myself, as enormous green pasture for my country's children to play and romp.
Let us go there-
Where the roads of my country ramble into flowers in the month of chaitra, and carry like trains my people the travellers to great festival. Let us not sit idle, let us go and join our great people, with our sickles, in the festival of harvesting.
* * *
Once before the jaws of monstrous cities Swallowed me
I used to relax my limbs on the golden sands of seaside beaches.
And stretch my gaze beyond the restless Waves of the blue sea.
I used to bathe in the vague sweetness of fancying the objects and lands, beyond the limits of my visual experience…is it Rangoon, or Singapore, or Bangkok, or that large chunk of water, that liquid sapphire, the Pacific,which is my blue dream flying In the sky, fallen to the ground, having lost its wings, somewhere suddenly.
Seas are punctuations in the sentence of earth
The running civilizations breath rest a while When commas, colons, and hyphens interfere in their travels. They are then introduced to the lands of new shores, with fresh looks and In fresh garments.
Seas are pots of ink, which the earth uses To write her romances.
Empires, civilizations, scents of knowledge Are scribblings, which the winds carry from the seas. Those ancient winds, light the cities, rule the countries.
And , it is the same ink with which the epics Of man are written. Time swallows the poems Written by man, for the health of man.
I ate old poems now, and vomited their Undigested limbs. Now My hunger is for the new word.
I knit poems now with the void Thundering beyond my eyes, With the blue whispering beyond my seas With the heights soaring beyond my stars:
With depths in me which my hand Cannot reach,
With al the material which my Contemporaries are not familiar with-
Beyond the cities in which I remain Undigested: Beyond the forests where my soul hatches Her yearnings, Beyond that circular line which binds all Created things and only the one arc of which is Visible to human eyes,
And beyond which my third eye, craves to burst: There waiting for me
My blue, blue sea, lying in wait For centuries on end..
- Seshendra Sharma
http://seshendrasharma.weebly.com
Seshendra'smotherLateAmmayamma (Sitting)With(From Left)Her Youngest Daughter Devasena ,Daughter-in-law(Seshendra's Wife)Janaki,Son Seshendra,Husband late Subrahmanyam;Youngest Son Rajsekharam and elder daughter Anusuya in 1949 at Seshendra's house at Thotapalli Gudur Village,Nellore District,Pin:524311(A.P.)India