u left
plunging me
into a void
that grows
so vast
that with each moment
i am afraid
even you
cannot
now fill it
yet
your name
is the mantra
i whisper
with each breath
as i yearn
to fall
even deeper
into the void
shekhar
shekhar
u left
plunging me
into a void
that grows
so vast
that with each moment
i am afraid
even you
cannot
now fill it
yet
your name
is the mantra
i whisper
with each breath
as i yearn
to fall
even deeper
into the void
shekhar
shekhar
Could you fill the void?
What are these tears
a little salt, a little sweet
All said and done
Is all I own
To offer at your feet
Better luck next time:
I was born when she kissed me,
I died when she left me,
I lived a few days while she loved me…
—
By Bogart from the Big Sleep.
Cheers,
Soumitra
Lava erupting inside…
A breath…
And it turns into cool spring….
In that one breath who ever dies…his round completes…..
And is there bar that can even love restrain?
The tiny tear shall make the lover’s secret plain.
Bodies of loveless men are bony framework clad with skin;
Then is the body seat of life, when love resides within.
–ThirukkuraL
sree, that is magnificent, have been scoring the web for Thirukkural’s writings and am educating myself, shekhar
beautiful!
taDap uTtenGe phir kabhi, is manzar ki yaad mein
ab zaraa so jaayenge, is dard ke qaraar mein
“Parousia”
by Louise Gluck
Love of my life, you
Are lost and I am
Young again.
A few years pass.
The air fills
With girlish music;
In the front yard
The apple tree is
Studded with blossoms.
I try to win you back,
That is the point
Of the writing.
But you are gone forever,
As in Russian novels, saying
A few words I don’t remember-
How lush the world is,
How full of things that don’t belong to me-
I watch the blossoms shatter,
No longer pink,
But old, old, a yellowish white-
The petals seem
To float on the bright grass,
Fluttering slightly.
What a nothing you were,
To be changed so quickly
Into an image, an odor-
You are everywhere, source
Of wisdom and anguish.
LIGHT
by C. K. Williams
Another drought morning after a too brief dawn downpour, uncountable silvery glitterings on the leaves of the withering maples— I think of a troop of the blissful blessed approaching Dante,
“a hundred spheres shining,” he rhapsodizes, “the purest pearls . . . ” then of the frightening brilliant myriad gleam in my lamp of the eyes of the vast swarm of bats I found once in a cave,
a chamber whose walls seethed with a spaceless carpet of creatures, their cacophonous, keen, insistent, incessant squeakings and squealings
churning the warm, rank, cloying air; of how one,
perfectly still among all the fitfully twitching others, was looking straight at me, gazing solemnly, thoughtfully up from beneath the intricate furl of its leathery wings
as though it couldn’t believe I was there, or were trying to place me, to situate me in the gnarl we’d evolved from, and now,
the trees still heartrendingly asparkle, Dante again, this time the way he’ll refer to a figure he meets as “the life of . . .” not the soul, or person, the life, and once more the bat, and I,
our lives in that moment together, our lives, our lives, his with no vision of celestial splendor, no poem, mine with no flight, no unblundering dash through the dark, his without realizing it would, so soon, no longer exist, mine having to know for us both that everything ends,
world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain.
I write, I post, I delete
On this one
It’s all wise
It’s all otherwise
What do you say?
Who knows?
I think someone up there has a sense of humour
The minute you who think you know
Life switches paths
And you’re left wondering
Did I learn anything at all?
It will all beat you to your knees
Break your spirit
Squeeze your mind dry of its questions
Rub the egotism of your quest for knowledge
Into the dry earth of changing possibilities
Until you lie there sprawled in the grass
On your back
Sandwiched between heaven and earth
Wondering who made this sky so exhaustively blue and clear and simple
And why do I care at all
Until that moment of surrender
Until that beating down of the ‘I’
Until that complete loss of ‘isms’
The universe will give away no secrets
GJ : Until that moment of surrender
Until that beating down of the ‘I’
Until that complete loss of ‘isms’
The universe will give away no secrets
U have it absolutely right, GJ !
Shekhar
The void is that which stands right in the middle of this & that. The void is all inclusive having no opposites. There is nothing which it excludes or opposes. Its a living void because all forms come out of it & who ever realises the void is filled with life & power & love of all things. The spirit gone is existing & lives on..
your entries made me think of the Medieval troubadours …
“And she
has all my heart and all myself and all herself and all the world, has
robbed my heart from me and left me
not a thing but my desire
and a desiring heart.”
Bernard de Ventadorn (1150-1180)
Bernard is mourning not only the loss of a love connection, but also the loss of that spiritual energy that, even though it is triggered by the beauty of an earthly creature, satisfies his yearning for the absolute and is necessary to his life. In the game of Medieval courtly love, this loss is a given, but in the game of life today…..?
Yes Lu, all love is a yearning to find the infinite in the illusion of our finite selves, and how incredible that we can take something like love and so often turn it into obsession, thereby damming the flow of love, shekhar
Its a spring which falls on rock and still with the rock.
Love is flawless.
The voidless void? Just another quality of the void, I am guessing.
I was at the photo exhibition
watching the stills from world-over
It made for an engrossing display
Untill I felt her presence take-over.
Long open hair; like many a silk thread
O! those sun-shades, sitting proudly on her head
A pair of faded jeans just so neat
Her slender walk, watching her was a treat.
Amid the art, she herself was an art
But I was growing numb right from the start
She was stopping as if to hear me say
But that courage, why had I kept it at bay?
Two rounds of the gallery; still no luck
Every time I got a chance, I laid low and ducked
Heart pumping hard and not to my surprise
Those moments of reckoning, O! time just flies.
Time to make an exit, she went in first
My eyes still not off her, I made a last burst
It was a sinking feeling, like sitting in a giant-wheel
Of lost chances, O! this exhaustion that I feel.
And still,
Her picture stays with me
Like an art, forever it will be…
(Why am I left in this nothingness?)
“Yearn to fall even deeper into the void” !!!
Nothingness, inertia or vaccum is created by a desire or longing for the known unknown, can this void ever be filled?
Isn’t void or obsession a mirage that one falls into, unlike love where a person only rises above and beyond self ?
Nicely written.
Everyone here seems to have figured out what you are alluding to. I have no illusions about my intelligence , so it is easy for me to take up the courage to ask :
Is this written in the light of the recent events in your personal life?
Shekhar,
But doesn’t the void, the suffering, the lack of meaning of unrequited love, become filled, hopefully, by a sinister wisdom?
“What a nothing you were,
To be changed so quickly
Into an image, an odor-
You are everywhere, source
Of wisdom and anguish.”
(Louise Gluck)
sujay, everything on my site is written by ideasm thoughts, joy or pain that arise from interpretations of the events in my personal life !shekhar
Hi Shekhar
These are some real deep poems. remind me of mine that i end up writing due to similar reasons 🙂
love your blog
Swapnil
Dear all,
it is refreshing to hear it out in the open–we all seem to understand specific bits and pieces of the poems we post, or we seem to get the poems’ basic concepts because we see parts of ourselves reflected in them. It does not matter what time and place we belong to, nor if we speak in first person or through someone else’s verses–we are capable of understanding because in those words we recognize the same intensity and passion we live by.
Maybe the void is an essential part of our psychological genetic makeup.
“Oh pangs of love!
How necessary you are to me and how precious.
My eyes closing on imaginary tears, my hands
stretching out ceaselessly towards nothingness.
I dreamed last night of crazed landscapes and of
adventures as dangerous from the perspective
of death as from the perspective of life which
are both also the perspective of love.
At my waking you were present, oh pangs of love,
oh desert muses, oh exigent muses.”
Robert Desnos (French Surrealist)
The original in French is much btter than this translation, but you get the idea…
I hope I did not kill the conversation. I love your poems and responses.
Can we come out of the void? is happy love dead? is it just an illusion fabricated in films?
Lu, I thought the idea was to explore the void, and in that exploration, painful as it is, to come to discover the self and therefore your connection to the universe. Is happy love dead ? No – but the intensity of love does nto often lead to contentment, but to a desire to dig deeper and deeper into the other person – till u realize that you are looking for yourself and the other person is become the conduit.
Yes ofcourse there is another more balanced love, a contented living out in each other’s nurturing quality and each other’s presence. Personally ? I have always destructed my relationships when the other person is looking for contentment, I am afraid.
It’s a fatal flaw I guess,
Shekhar
Void is mystical and contradictory. It yearns to be filled by someone at the same time you dont want it to be filled at all. You need a hug, at the same time you want to feel that hollow pang till its last pinch.
At the end, I move on; the ache prevails, but I move on…
It is quite true that the intensity of love may not always lead to contentment but is often a search for your own soul through the other person. But isn’t it that sometimes, we invite our own suffering because we want to be loved the way we want to and the disruption of the idea may be no love at all…?
all great love stories are tragedies.true!!!
ranzha would not have been ranzha had he got heer.
“Its a void that fills me.”
dude…u r great…who has guts to say such things openly !!!…
YO!….
you are young!!!
take care…lots of love…kedar…
so if you dig deeper in love searchin for yourself and the other person becomes the conduit, then does that mean love is selfish? What if you do not find yourself even then? Should’nt love ideally be contentment in knowing well the other person and in feeling that he or she completes you? Is it so necessary to be in love to search for yourself, is there no other way to truly find yourself? If what you feel is not as intense then does that mean it is not love? Sometimes your ideas leave me asking so many questions…. i guess i will understand only when i stop seeking answers…i guess its one of those things that become clear with time…or maybe not..
desire to dig deeper and deeper into the other person – till u realize that you are looking for yourself and the other person is become the conduit.
“Well said”
Finally digging ourselves….and when u awake from that depth(partial depth yet)…and all that remains is a handful of moments…it leaves a hole!! Wisdom, understanding, nothing fills it…but the same depth yet again…yet again ah! A long journey, that never seems to end…if it is to be yet again…ah! Not again!”Numb”
Liked your new face on ur main page…
“I exist because you imagine I do”
“It exists thats why you imagine!”
Have a grrt day!
as i yearn
to fall
even deeper
into the void
“Sadistic” Pain>pleasure!! “Ruthless”
You are 2 years 5months and 2 days ahead of me – plunging in to the void – you have worded my feelings more accurately than I have understood this till date – again I say – thanks stranger.