‘In The Heart’s Suite’ and other poems
By: Gopikrishnan Kottoor
In The Heart’s Suite
The curtains are still
In the heart’s suite.
A little light
From the lamp shade,
Is all orange upon the floor.
What do I still search for
In the heart’s rooms?
Rooms, where
The walls fill
With calendars,
Portraits,
Something live suddenly
Running fast across the border,
getting behind the scenery of shy deer
by the stream,
Mating in the woods.
But why is it so
Cold here?
I know I’m searching
Something,
A wish,
That like roses on porcelain
Would brightly endure.
A gift, with its moisture
Of eyes that said farewell,
still looking for what is past,
Unseen;
This persistence of vision
Before the cataract,
Of far away birds in the forest hills.
And I know,
The curtains will soon rise.
The orange on the floor
Will hug its new light.
The breeze will bring in
A sea- face
With the salt of
Your tears.
###
Words, That Come To Me
Words,
That come to me as pet sheep to the slow
Meandering
Of my thoughts,
Stray not from me farther away,
So I’ll miss you, when the sun goes down.
Come, let them come,
Come back to me
After pasturing all day,
Far away
Come with much grace,
and tenderness,
Come,
lt is time to sleep,
To return together
To her, veiled in imagination,
To the moonlit pen of poetry.
###
When You Are The Poem
When you are the poem in my mind,
Why am I waiting for
Those words again?
Again and again,
Where time is all lost in water?
Ah, poem in my mind,
Why am I writing,
Again and again
All these poems about you?
Ain’t that like lines
Writ all over ice?
Yet, poems of you must be,
What must not be,
And will be,
What must not be,
Will be.
Poems that flow back to water
To turn to ice,
Knowing I’ll water them,
over again
When you are the poem
In my mind
###
I’ll Write These Poems
I’ll write these poems,
about you
Until I reach the dead end;
That small bend,
What you meant,
Or unmeant,
From where you won’t matter,
Whether you came,
Or left.
But it is the turmoil,
Just like the waves
Of the sea where we
Washed our feet together;
My face,
A red sun upon your breasts;
Some hymns remain,
Of birds that sang them,
That will not return,
Because, past the sea
They triumphed,
the desert burnt their wings.
And until then, not knowing,
Why you no more care,
After all that alms giving;
Though you seemed all snow,
That once was too quick to melt,
When tour eyes had enough wet,
For my love letters to sail through,
Such, I cannot,
And will not let forget,
And must not,
Knowing the bend,
The dead end,
Where these poems
Vanish without you.
###
Parrot- Mango
Mango?
It was exactly a parrot,
Tinted gloss of green,
Sharp beak,
Lovable face.
I fixed a pin
On its puffy side,
And it became
A bright eye.
It became a green bird
I could fly on
And I flew on it,
Descending down- skies,
To know the truth
Of Time
And its wisdom.
Like you, Shanmugha
On your peacock.
But first,
Taking a cue from your brother Ganesha,
Arumugha,
I flew around my father
And mother,
Thrice,
Their last words cupped
Upon my breast;
But O, Harohara,
With your spear in my hand
I killed
My childhood,
And all those fiery red-ants,
On the creeper,
All those butterflies
That had beautiful wings
That came down to those flowers
In our garden.
Skanda,
I wandered on wings,
Then
Traced the Mahabharata
With Ganesha’s broken tusk;
Kartikeya,
The bird had magic;
I was two-in-one, I
Unlike you,
I became my brother’s keeper
I cast aside your temper
Was humbled by the calmness
Of your elephant-headed brother;
In my journey
Across Time,
I
Stopped by the ruins
Where my friends had died,
Mapped corners
Where an embrace was much more
Than merely holding tight
Where tears
Were true as fish
With stars on their forehead
In the pools of innocent eyes;
I went back to where
I scooped the mound
And held again in my arms
My dying brother;
As I continued my journey
Round the universe,
Velayudha, I
tried not to remember
The demons I saw
In the forms of teachers, gurus,
Friends, women, and sages,
For if I did,
I would have to annihilate them all
I did not care any more,
For the signatures of
The falling woods and the effervescent trees,
Calling out to me as a child,
Stones where the serpents lay
Undercover,
How simple and straight forward in their stings unlike of man;
Those diamonds hurting upon the grass
Thorns that the flowers hid,
As though it wasn’t yet time to reveal them,
The whistling streams,
The river at the far end gagged and laid to dry,
The puddles
I stepped on in the unending fables
Of my grandmother rains,
You taught me, mani,
that parents
And all the dead
Became true Gods to pray to
with their deaths;
I knew,
That the further I flew,
No God could stop
My hunger for truth
Wound deep in wounds,
I would have to go atop a mountain,
And live there, like you forever
Forgetting
All relationships,
Because, Muruga, as you know,
The truth is all dust
Of lust,
So you must continue,
Restless atop Palani,
So in mid-flight,
To stop all truths
To continue to live
In the coziness of my home,
And not to remember
Or want realization anymore
Because everything on earth
Is hunger of desire,
For breasts and the wild beasts In them that dip tongues deep
Lying in closed dark rooms,
And euphemize,
Getting back to where
Water loses the art
Of turning itself red;
Ah, in mid-flight,
Azhaka,
Subramanya,
Jewel of the earth,
Thinking of you
I unpierced the nail
From my parrot mango;
And, slumped, and plummeting,
Fell,
Into
enemy territory
And sensing the advancing avalanche,
Threw my vel.
The wind kept blowing,
Unable to fathom the lit sky
Anymore
In sudden blindness
My green bird kept rising,
higher, higher.
Beautiful poems.. Salute to the writer