Madhav Ajjampur
(Poet: If you are reading this on your phone, please hold your phone horizontally so the line lengths are preserved.)
I love to play with words;
they seem like they could be
the ever-pulsing chords
of the poetry of poetry.
Like clacking-needles they stitch
seamlessly the ethereal bridge
that stretches from the jewelled-seas
up to the sun-mooned skies;
and in between, they girdle – they embrace –
each grey-shaded aspect of the human race;
envy beauty lovehatefury – sorrow joy regret.
Like silver-flying-fish, they leap in haste
from all the blessed, unmute tongues;
like fledgling birds, they flap – unbalanced –
within the whorls of restless air;
like eagles with great brooding wings,
they glide on stratospheric heights –
self-born, surcharged, electrified.
Nesting in a canticle – a chaunt –
in hypnotic mantra – in vaidic fount –
they lend the rhythm of the vaak
to the music of the spheres.
And if wooed quietly, they might,
in pity or in magic or delight,
show each of us just how
between the quiet of the worlds
springs a fountainhead of joy.