Poesy o Poesy!

Written in 1937 in one sitting, at Visakhapatnam, this tour de force of a poem celebrates the magical moments of the birth of poetry. In the thousand year old Telugu literature, the famous poets have praised  the muse, called her a goddess, mother, wife and daughter, and down the centuries continued the line of steadfast refusal to dedicate the poetry to kings. But never before, the labor pains, and pangs of a poet were recorded. While it was emotion recollected in tranquility to William Wordsworth, it is emotion recollected in commotion to Sri Sri,  rightly considered to be  a great poet (Mahakavi) and surely poet of the Century.

All his poems of Mahaprasthanam anthology (1950 first publication and  several reprints  there after) are now available in English and Urdu translation by Rama Teertha, and Abdul Wahed, respectively.

In my youthful, flower like delicate songs environ

In one auspicious moment

In those days I thought of you

Located In beautiful gardens

And moved in the yonder skies as a beauty

Unreachable

When for you the life became a penance

And the search went on in inebriated moments

In the all around theatrics of fashionable feigns

Your contours  not being visible

Weren’t there days  I  rotted alone

In the cave, cottage, and in darkness

Under your spell

In the long determined  rigor of pining

In the silent Samadhi

In my mind that hanged like a festoon

To the door of heaven

Know not  what tumults, languages and spectacles

Felt within –

And I saw what kind of strange, weird

Fantastic blue light strobes

And from which forces

my song received the responses of  life

what sounds I gathered for you

and in every searched corner heaps and heaps of

war cries

in the dead night,  surrounding the skies

showering clouds

and the ferocious gales frightening

the waves of seas reverberating with

the sounds of  drums and the blowing conches

in that very night

in the dark  forests, beyond a rhyme and rhythm

the cacophonic  calls of beasts to a crescendo

the eternal song among the starry expanses

earth quakes, fall of  governments,

revolution and conflicts

all are your dynamism

all are your cosmic manifestation

And what are those spectacles

And expositions

Crowd my mind when I think of you-

The blooming diamonds in the fire lakes

Flying metal eagles

And the drum beats that cause fever to the cannons –

What else I have Heard?

In the midnight,

the  inner world orbits of  the dreams

of a just delivered  mother holding tight

Her child to heart –

And  in the mysterious sleep of the babe

The sound of ancient memories cradling

In the  ICU

In the scalpel magic of  surgery wizards

In the twilight zone of life and death

The eyes half closed patient’s

Intravenous Warm flood of blood

The  blabber and shrieks of a drunkard

Who slipped and fell into a side canal

Unable to manage himself

In the brutal sexual bout

The severely suffering public Roja

Silently  undergoing the trauma of pounding-

Like terrible songs blaring around

The secret  told by the hanged head

And in the  dark interiors of a lunatic

A flicker of light

The screech of an owl

And the croak of frogs

The angry voices and wails

Of striking labor

Their  wives and children

Rending the skies

and touching the poles

words of a million stars,

songs of a billion waterfalls,

and a trillion furies of shoring waves

Mother, I heard, heard countless

And when I am ready to submit

What all I heard and saw

And went about searching for words

They came

Crossing the graveyards of lexicons

Leaving behind the shackles of grammar

Discarding the  anaconda  embrace of prosody

They came out rushing, gushing

Running, stepped into my heart –

Triggering a pandemonium and ruckus

In that terrible,  forceful , wavy, spinning motion

In whatever streets I roamed

And the songs created by me washing my sins

Purified  and made me to surrender to the heart of joy-

With all my senses awakened

What I am writing and seeing

What I am breathing

And whether in the  state of Nirvikalpa  Samadhi

My life has gained the Nirvana

The music thus bound me in majestic magic

And to the music born out of astral conjugal bliss

in  the divine music that kissed again and again

Playing  on my pulsating arteries

Born in the moments of life ebbing out

Many a melody conducting a sonorous alto

A swooping song that took hold of my life

In a giant eagle’s grip

Beyond the duality of joy and sorrow etcetera

Unblemished, unfathomable, unthinkable, unlimited,

Solitary,  one and only,

Subjecting me to a transient  yet permanent

Divine  experience

And melting me in the end

You the luminous poesy! Dame enchantress,

Poesy o poesy!

What about the day

When I was  shapeless in my mother’s womb

You contoured me and made my ego hungry

With life force passing through

My inner and outer  sensory frame

I fell on this earth

And accepting the visitations of

Comforts and  troubles

Becoming a traveler in the world odyssey

Turning into a renouncing passer

While conducted myself in fear and fright

aren’t  you the one

who assured  with a  protecting hand

and redeemed  me?

You the gentle merciful one!

Nonpareil, boundless, poesy, O poesy!

Today, will you be able to hear

My sighs covered by the daredevilry of thoughts

Expecting that I will write something

And the world  reflects in my works

Hoping to gain fruition out of this penance

I want to build a song that echoes from the hearts of countrymen

Like a chant,

I want to bring  the skies closer to this world

And to make my ideals the showers of light to be shared by

All brethren

In hand now  and yet eluding end of your great robe fluttering

And  Causing winds

I will make a temple  with my words

And  proffer my songs as  a heart touching submission

topped with  all that pollen of flowers tossed at you

you the rasa cleft,   the  diamond mine,

mother, O poesy!

Poesy! Poesy!  O poesy!

1937

30^th April  is  108^th birthday of Sri Sri.