A song still to be heard
when did loneliness
be an obsession
it was virtue
reckoned in a crowd
no one objected
when was it born
this sense of ridicule
neither side wants to claim it
it came on along the way sometime
when could i like it
or the whitest wild bloom
which will remain in me
for time to come
though the flower might have gone
next time i traverse the path
through the unfamiliar mountain village
where i do not know
how to walk
but do come across such sights
beauty as an off chance
away from the city
i couldn’t appreciate it now
something that came my way
a lesser truth, though
it may stay maybe some place
along the way
like always
how could i fight for it
or was it meant to be explained
an unknown peace
to be less than human
or a man
i couldn’t ever like it
i am not a responsibility
where’s the bread
or humankind
did i separate the grass
from the hay
though i do not and know not
how to rear cows
was it some big folly in me
that i went this way
and came back in a while
knowing what to do and
not any of what else
and you were also here and there
somewhere about your world and life
i saw you were always somewhere there
in your life
none of me, i knew not you from far
and now at the heights of yours
i too know how when you
sit beside me or walk a common path
to be close to my life
something which happens
away from my existence
it should have been a garden of course
but i wouldn’t have let
it stray away
where i couldn’t pluck it
or put it in my basket
a small work for the day
i could never do it
what a shame
land was always expensive
and here, now i do not know my way
i wouldn’t be less than plain
where nothing else exists
i wouldn’t prefer a disguise
an overlived fancy
my ideas don’t run life
but that too is for me at least i own up
my folly, peace would always
be less than war
i hold on to my peace
never leave it
and all else is terminable
to my idiotic or even idyllic idea
of peace, without a word on war
and to think that you too
couldn’t do any better at the
end of this season’s history
but at least you have astronomical salaries
i am more or less penniless and have
very less of the love i preach
it’s so less i couldn’t give to anybody else
times are bad i must say
Mountains, with the fog below
there’s the bridge
along the way
that nature undid
a big tree just crashed down on the water
the cause was that
there was a stream of
a real good water
flowing down the ridge
people i knew i thought
but had seen or sometimes spoken to
gave familiarity to the bridge
not much of a bridge really
only that you didn’t have
to get your feet wet
just a bit if it wasn’t there
more of a natural decorum
for those who don’t like
too much of the order
and compulsion coming
from people who do their such
and which you dislike
it could be that they
wouldn’t like you to
admire nature’s abundance
or all of any liveable space
what’s adherence when
i don’t live in any of it
and what would a mountain be
if i couldn’t find it
in its own place
when is a fact a way of life
is it fact that birds
make sounds you like
in the morning when you wake up
but everyone would like it
nothing factual, but
likeable all the same
nothing of a fact that life seems
to happen their way
but what’s the surety
it’s not happening
any other way
a man wouldn’t be a stranger
to his own life
and does he have
to be told of the
availability of his life even
and what if I perchance
beheld something else
as life and day
war and peace
are worlds apart anyway
and it doesn’t need an understanding
too great, to just stand apart
from it all
Hillock of shame
at the hillock of shame
i felt unashamed
to take my clothes off
bathing there i was aware
and nymphs with feeling
bathed there too
with tears on their cheeks
higher beings, all unashamed
for the place was meant for that
ideally put there
for all those who did not want to feel ashamed
they had not bathed for long
not because they were tired of that
they wanted to be lonesome
for that’s the way to bathe
at the hillock unashamed
