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.