Keshav Malik (Three Poems)

ADMONITION

Arrive there at last

where not mere pulse ticks

nor bare necessity seeks

but speaks a sense of all worry risen sheer.

If not? - - uncertain be

of carrying home the gold of conviction.

 

Arrive there, where turbulence transforms

to energized forms, like those friezes

of wide-eyed gods and goddesses

bitten deep into ancient stone,

till then not tom-tom loud in public.

 

No, crave no relief

except in great belief or braver action.

Speak, if you must

but first bow to silence.

 

 

ADVENTURER

 

He lowers himself within

from the crimson aperture of the mouth

to enter the trunk,

and so in order to scour

the arterial roads of the heart,

and to circle the radial dome of the head,

and then, along the far-flung veins has the nerve

to scan the movement of the periodic outward bound

passionate floods.

 

Look how, as if on a raft, he floats

on the swiftly flowing down interior rivers,

of a body, whether in health or fever,

diligently searching for the secret cell

of that invisible, the trickster soul.

 

 

ALL LUCKLESS LOVERS

 

After the heart’s great defeats

They gather screaming speeds

And nose-dive, blazing towards

The yawning jaws of Hades:

 

With leaden weights dragging at their feet

They spin crazed like whirling dervishes

While slicing winds strip their sides.

 

O horror of the spirit’s huge white lies

That drop them, spinning, swift,

Down the clawing flames of their mind’s hell-heat!

 

So writhe- - round and round the pole’s magnetic might,

Through ceaseless eternity’s remorseless night- -

All luckless lovers must,

Who stray from the true flight.