Oh light sepia winged love
What will you sing to me?
Hymns from heavens above,
Or an earthly threnody?
Oh how you whip the incensed air -
Strokes of brown rhyme against the blue
Sweet calls to your love flying fair
She'll shrug and yield when you'll pursue.
Engirdle with songs that hoist in merry
A passion that floats to the skies.
So isn't it true, aerial emissary
You cry what in my heart does rise?
Oh to be you while you are me
Oh to fly singing my heart's truth
Oh to be what you so easily be
Oh for love's breath as chants to sooth.
Lend me your wings but for a day
I have many a tune to hum.
I bared the earth for a chalet
Where love still bloods red a bosom.
I have found none and thus I stop
In vacant quest for the murdered One
Unsurprised eyes gaze as you hop
O'er sunbeams that light where sin has won.
For you and I do surely know
That which flies free is love definite
And that which slyly walks below,
Tis the black of hearts burnt inordinate.
Started out nicely. But after the aerial emissary quartet, I have a feeling that the poem lost its simplicity and charm. It's also quite possible that my faculty for poetry and imagery has been eroded a bit.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, try reading this poem.
http://bharathiyaar.blogspot.com/2007/07/song-of-freedoms-minstrels.html
(I know self advertisement! :P ). Has a similar feel to your piece.
Dear A,
ReplyDeleteI have been wanting to come to your blog and comment for a while so I am glad you have added the link here (so that others too can visit your excellent blog). I shant comment about the lack of charm or otherwise (for that is something entirely subjective) but I wonder why you found the simplicity lacking. 2 stanzas of simplicity is pretty good for someone like me!! ;-)
Perhaps the last stanza was brooding but the two stanzas after the one you mention are also simple though going beyond mere flying and prancing about. But if exploring something beyond mere flight is ruining simplicity then the 2nd stanza in the poem you translate is also deep in its import, don't you think? :-)
Perhaps it is just as a dear friend said about my writing: Anything in your hands is very heavy and strong. Lightness can rarely be associated with you!
So maybe it is not so much about your sensibilities as it is the curse of depth! :-D
Extremely flattering to note that the Mahakavi wrote something similar too!! Only if I could write like him...
Actually, it's not even about just brooding or the theme. Perhaps it was the language or a twist of the phrase. (Come to think of it, threnody, emissary are not very commonplace words either...). I give up actually. I cannot point out exactly, but just the feeling. One mistake from my side - the mood changes from the third stanza, not the second. Maybe if I post a couple more comments, I might come around to accepting all of them! :P
ReplyDeleteMuch of Mahakavi's poetry is concerned with birds actually. 'kuyil pAttu' actually is an almost psychedelic poem speaking of his romance with a Koel who flirts with the poet while having liaisons with a monkey and an ox. It seems like the whole piece was written under opium influence, but that's just my guess. Perhaps that is what the Poets had and we lack - the ability to lose ourselves utterly, the courage for self destruction, be it in substance abuse or love or revolution...
Nice rally between Agni and you!
ReplyDeleteYou are a great poet and this is indeed a great poem - on a level with Keats and Shelley in their poems to the nightingale and the skylark, if not much higher.
You truly can be compared easily to Shakespeare, as I have mentioned many times before. Gifted indeed.
Again, I hope you do publish a book of poems/sonnets at least, if not one book with a collection of your Zen Koans or God-Devil stories. You really should. You deserve to be published.