top of page

               

 Prabhanjan K. Mishra (Two Poems)

 THE  HOLY  FIRE

      (For Rashid Khosravi, poet)        

                                  

Old as mankind

with a history of joy and pain,

its tongues lick it up without qualms

throwing up gluttonous belches

and smacking hungry lips.

 

From ashes it has risen

honing civilizations from holocausts.

Its hisses have threatened the Devil

to shrink back, and its warmth

has driven the chill out of  marrows.

 

Worshipped with fear and love

it cleanses, cures and destroys.

Burning eternal it rules

the scriptures and conscience

of its worshippers.

 

Humans cook meals and light lamps;

romance, eating in candle  light by fireside;

and at times the flames  leaping into their eyes

and the heat to their  loins,

feel holy and multiply.

                 

(Believed to be the oldest fire burning nonstop and being tended by Parsis, the followers of Zarathustra, at Udvada of Gujarat).

 

 

HAD NOT BUDDHA LOOKED NORTH                                             

          (For Tenzin Tsundue, the Tibetan activist and poet)

                                                     

 

His wait and fast has imploded

like the aborted  pod in a womb

with crashed embryonic dreams,

the clay castles in a seismic upheaval;

 

the milk turning black,

the music of temple serenity

junked to crass cackle,

the committed men gone to humus.

 

How does the fleet-footed monk ditch his frock,

the shrewd shepherd hitch up his cloak,

his bleating lambs await

their freedom from slaughter?

 

The nation they look for in their pockets

turns out a counterfeit coin in their fingers.

The hopes they carried around

have passed into the hands of a pickpocket.

 

                                                                                             

The activist ties a band around his head

as a mark of dissent and wears smiles

that prophesy an integrity: ‘I would live

as a martyr and die a citizen’.                     

 

If he is laid to rest

by his usher (or the usurper!),

with Pharaoh's gold heaped around

and the Koh-i-Noor on head,

 

wearing the dragon’s armour 

and revved by the unguent of myths

or morphed into a god man,

or anointed as the messiah,

 

can he shape his country

into a beauty, a melody, his beau; can he

push all pain behind parentheses,

as well his kitchen garden?

 

This night is empty, the dark is darker;

this destitute hour, the poverty is penury;

Tenzin is wondering what misfired, that

the captain escapes before the boat sank.

                                                                                            

P.S. - A volt face Dalai Lama shocked his flock by his statement during the 1st week of March, 2005. In an appeal to the Chinese Government, the Lama said that he wished to end the Tibetan freedom struggle.

 

         

        UNDERGROUND 

        FLOWERS                          

bottom of page