Vada Vada Vagvadini! — Invocation of the Muse: A Series

The Madonna by Jehangir Sabavala

A.J. Thomas

A Word

After my first collection Germination came out in 1989, I wrote poetry over the next three-four years, followed by  a “dry period” extended over ten years. Towards the middle of that period, I had been initiated into spiritual practices that changed the course of my life forever. About five years into it, poetry suddenly happened to me as the blessings of the Great Mother. Her many manifestations exploded in my consciousness and came out in this series. I haven not looked back since

**

You

You
like deluvian waters drowning the vermin
like deluvian fires burning away rakshasas
like tempests and storms blowing away dull mud….
.

No need of any definitions
all definitions meet in you.
You are the golden key
to the heaven’s gate of Poetry and Love
through which gales of fire
rush down
to earth.
Yes, your measure is the Great Mother
and She keeps you as Her own. 

Your Love

Your love
is the truth that blazes forth as sun
above everything else
all germs perish in the fire 
that’s hurled down….

Your love is enveloping me
soft, light and translucent 
yet, like burnished bronze 
turning me into a devi idol.
You said your love is life-long
and it’s impossible to let it go.
I see that in action. 
Set this father also free
only at the very end.
Till then, hold me on the tight leash 
of your love.
Dear child, you are my mother. 
 

The Storm’s Past

The storm’s past
the stars are out
the waves again back to their chant…
You, the unfathomable ocean, 
once more calm.

Yes, surge up to the shore
as much as you want
Embrace it, roll over it,
smoothen it out
of all traces of everything
and return spent…and come 
again when you will…
The shore awaits your embrace
as often as it can get…

I Am a Wide Expanse

I am a wide expanse,
pasture most green and lush
Forage on me, frolic on me   
get absorbed in the silence of 
the open skies above 
standing motionless on me….
I won’t deny you anything
and myself don’t seek anything
And yet your heifer-presence
thrills me from end to end.

Your Emotions

You said you can’t yet trust 
your emotions with any man….
Don’t….
Give them to the calm of the green
Give them to the whisper of the breeze
Give them to the forked lightning
Give them to the sullen rain-clouds
and get them back as rain and thunder
Give them to the fallow field
and get a full, ripe yield….
Only giving away you’ll get them back….
But don’t forget, 
to give them to Rudra first.

You design pain

You design pain
in various intensities
and administer it red hot. 
You sharpen you silences
stiletto-like
and dart them  
through the chinks 
in my old-fashioned patience-armour.
So sure of yourself–
the other doesn’t exist for you
at least for the moment.
And you are invariably lucky;
for, even if detected
you are always let off lightly.

Orbiting 

You’ve launched me
Now there is no stopping me
No turning back
I’m in the orbit..
I am flashing past
the glimmering orbs of poesy
I don’t want to come down now
or ever.
Wait, isn’t it 
your name resonating in me
your voice speaking to me
your breath close to my ear?

Write a Poem on Love

Write a poem on love
and lock it away in another poem
and then in another and another and another
Like you plant a seed 
covered in dry cow-dung manure
ashes and green leaves
and wait for it to germinate
sprout, grow up and spread its branches,
Let there be an ultimate poem
that bursts out of all poems
and fills the universe.

Write a poem on love
Post in the sky
Let the wind take it
Let the rain soak it
Let the sun dry it
Let the earth receive it.

Shava-Shiva

This shava
was waiting for your dance on me
O shakthi
throughout these years….
You have now brought back
action to my numb limbs….
You, my poetry, back with me now
fill me with violent energy
and meditative calm at once….
Come to me in any form you like 
unleash yourself on me
I know that you are 
the same in any bhaava….

Vagartham

You have the depth of a teardrop
A joyful teardrop–
Exhilaration brimming over
in the knowledge that we found each other
after such a prolonged search
across many births
and myriad tangles of karmas….
And all the time
we were there 
each in the other
Just that 
we could wax into each other’s consciousness
only now.

Tirades and Tantrums

Tirades and tantrums
O Bala, your leela
Cooing adoringly
the next moment
you complete the play….
You begin, expand
and end with a stunning blow….
And in a moment
you hold me upright
in a compassionate embrace….
You conserve….
Whatever is in excess
you frown upon….
Balance is restored
and the next moment it’s tipped
and toppled, and the play goes on…. 

The File

You are the file
sharpening me
shaping me to perfection
smoothening out my deformities….
Sparks flare, filings fly
but, are also a feast to the eye 
The grating sound does tax the ear
The fluid hand movements
terrify the heart….
Yet perfection is attained
at the cost 
merely of superfluity!
How I wish the file could also 
be smooth! 

My Love Is Like the Sun

Blazing away 
at times,
Blocked by rainclouds
and blacked out,
at times,
Smiling through a drizzle
as a rainbow in all its splendour
The toddler of the dawn
with a toothless grin 
The mellow, mature man of the evening,
My love
the sun 
constant….

Like After the First Rains

Like after the first rains
lush vegetation sprouts
now there will be new life
the old receding in our memory
It is the epiphany we both were searching

It’s not you giving or I taking
It’s we together seeking
The softness of a fresh-bloomed flower
The cadence of a soul-stirring raga
The fragrance of the elanji flower

Like lips open in a soft smile
when life overflows
our bodies open up to receive each other
tenderly…tenderly
making us a single soul and body
vagartham
Parvatheeparameswaram

A Season of Love

Yes, it is the season of love
The season of celebrations
The season of festoons and fliers of the soul
The season of flowerpots and sparklers
The season of pipe music, the chenda drum
playing the Thayambaka in my consciousness
Panchavadyam heralding the procession
Along the white-sand strewn pathway
of my heart
lined on both sides
by the tender, split-coconut-leaf streamers.
.
How did it all begin?
Kalidasa, the magician who touched
My moribund muse
To resurrect and sing vernal ditties
Pathetic verses of parted love
And dirges of tragic elegance
Dostoevsky, my mirror-image,
Or,
Was it my bosom pal’s love-travails
Another poet-brother’s impossible love
for his own alter ego
I don’t know how each and all
were to be harbingers
of my own sweet captivity! 

I now know
that love remains
when the festivities are over
when the pandals are pulled down
when the temple-yard is littered with refuse
and mounds of elephant dung.
Yes. Love remains
quiet; it is the single wick lamp
that burns steadily before God
in front of the sanctum sanctorum.

                                                             **

The Other Poems

Puthrakameshti

Heart filled with tears
eyes turned into cinders
seeking reparation for the slip
I walk the earth, dazed.

What can bring back the lost charm
of a pledge born in heaven
overlooked by maya’s blinding leela?
Penance can repair the damage
but what about the ecstasy of 
the moment, never realized?

Only a deity can repeat the offer
of a boon once made
The deity did repeat the offer
and re-formed the sky unmade.

Visishtadaivatam

If my mouth doesn’t water seeing a honey-sweet fruit
If my eyes don’t widen seeing a glorious flower
If my nostrils don’t dilate to the faintest musk-odour
If there are no stirrings in my loins seeing a perfectly-shaped woman
If my heart doesn’t melt to a soulful tune
Then it were better I be dead like wormwood.

Poetry Happening Again

Poetry happening again
At fifty-one
Is like falling in love once again.
The eagerness 
of engagement
leaves the frame quaking
Every word that hums in the ear
is the sweet crooning of the beloved
The fire that burns in the heart
is one and the same…
Inseparable….
Let me have more and more of it
O Devi….
I won’t be satiated

now that I am treated to
savories long denied….

The Mirage Tree

I am standing
on the edge of a wilderness
No paths I find
in the merciless sun
no shade tree.
One tree at hand
is barren
bereft of all leaves.
Another tree 
full of fresh shoots
and purple tender leaves
invites me; approaching, it recedes
vanishes, again stands at a distance
luring me with its vacuous promises
its leaves, tinsel words and no roots
It takes sustenance directly from my breath
and leaves me suffocating

The Little Boy Bully

The little boy bully
playing with a nail
pinned down a worm

Its acute intelligence
oppressing the squirmer
made the nail more arrogant

Even in its death-throes
unwittingly arching up 
and biting the nail
the worm sounded apologetic
“Did I hurt you?”

The nail only boasted
“I am immune!”

And a wicked smile
creased a face–
the little boy bully’s.

The Boy to the Kite

O kite you are in full flight….
Leaping and swaying
dipping and careering
describing wide loops
shooting up vertically
you seek the deep-most sky
to quench your quest
to come to stillness hopefully….

But–
My care follows you
The thread is invisible
even to you
like my gaze
Still, it is there
It will bring you back to me
because you belong to me. 

Body-Mind 

“The body is a baby;
the mind has to take tender care of it,”
you said.
“Treat it kindly,
 caress and cuddle it close.”
Yes, dear;
the mind is ageless, rugged, wild, horrid
spewing nightmares
preparing delusive quagmires
pulling and pushing the body 
here and there
like an adult conducting a child
in a jostling, pressing crowd at a fair;
at times it preys upon the body like
a vulture;
finally, when the body can’t take it any longer
or, when the mind finds it profitable no longer
to reside in the body
it walks off
and the poor body is left
to go back to the elements and start all over again
until, the sullen, sulking mind will deign
to return to it again;
some mind.

Svayambhu

The storm raged
The rain lashed
The lightning flashed
The thunder roared
The earth shook
The rock-pillar just stood
still and unmoved.

The storm turned into a breeze
The rain whittled into a drizzle
The lightning shimmered in the distant skies
The thunder murmured in the faraway clouds
The earth’s golden sand smiled
The rock-pillar turned into a peepul tree
its tender coral-leaves laughing to the infant sun
and dancing in the playful gusts of the youthful wind
getting ready for a tandava
as the bashful prakriti turned soft and yielding. 
 
Sculpting Sound

Sculpting sound 
was something I knew nothing about.
And yet
I knew that sound is the one reality 
behind everything.
Beyond forms
shapes
and colours 
only 
sound 
is.

Relics

The milky haze of past-lives’ memories….

The path is upward, winding
In the navel of a hill
the crumbling relics 
of an ancient altar
Red-white fresh wounds
on the laterite  
Suddenly a phantom form takes shape
like scattered faith regrouping
The altar vanishes,
the deity propitiated.

*******

A.J. Thomas is an English-language poet, fiction writer, translator and editor. He translates poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction prose from Malayalam to English, and has more than 20 titles to his credit. Hee has M.Phil, and Ph.D. degrees in English Literature (Translation Studies) from the School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam..
As a poet and translator his works include Germination (Poetry, 1989), Aagaami Pal Ka Nirman (his poetry in Hindi translation-2010),  Bhaskara Pattelar and Other Stories, (Manas, 1993), Reflections of a Hen in Her Last Hour and Other Stories (Penguin India), both Paul Zacharia's story-cllections in translation, Keshavan’s Lamentations (Keshavante Vilaapangal, renowned novelist M.Mukundan’s premier work),  ONV Kurup’s verse-novel Ujjayini, (Rupa) among others.
He has been on the editorial team of Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi’s literary journal, for more than 20 years as its Assistant Editor, Editor and now as its Guest Editor.
He lives in New Delhi

—————- 
A.J. Thomas in The Beacon
Fishy Tales (Tails?)
Delhi, The First Time I saw You!
Visions of a Journey: “Bengal in My Blood”