IMAGE OF EARTH AND QUILL

Guest Poet Bijja Rathnashikamani



The Dawn

The Suicidal sun rises again
radiating his life to the terrain.

The sun was there upon the curve of waters
before I caught sleight of his light.

My heart rocks as the breaking colours
pass currents in brooks of my veins.

Wonder I again of the quiet vastness
of the obscure farther horizons
where the world crouched rolled into itself.

The deep blue waters crinkle and sparkle
--A sea of disturbance unfathomable.

The scene that portrays the rays
the sand water wind and skies
take birth by every sun
bring a fresh strangeness in me I'm newborn.

This continuum aligns the thoughts,
the glories of elements that fuse.

Vibrations of volatile Earth
penetrate my soul, levitate my Being.

I'm sublimated in the space
--the space to which I never belonged.
--A revelation of an immense Nothingness.

Then I am lost 
in the eternal waves of Time
that dawns and dawns.


August, 1998


Bijja Rathnashikamani's Questions:

I tried to present in this poem what Jiddu Krishnamoorthy said about Birth & Death. Am I successful?

Thru the lines 'glories of elements that fuse' and 'the space to which I never belonged' I tried to express some scientific ideas. Have I conveyed them?

Correspond with Bijja Rathnashikamani at
rashima@mailcity.com
with your ideas about this poem.




Belonging

My Thought belonged to a world
where my homesick mind healed
quizzical heartbeats answered.

Seasoned with trite thoughts
tight arguments and vexing axioms

		I writhed unconvinced in mirth
		that questioned my birth on this Earth.

Against all existence, fecundated Non-being
My soul hovered over realms of fetal things.

The seeming regression enshrouded my Dead-living,
splitting and denuding Everything from envelopes of Nothing.

This evergrowing wisdom shrunk and shrunk
into dotty sphere, orbited self-centered.

>From Infinite-Zero the Light broke
(indefinite to my expanding senses)
mirrored mirages of images, my own visages.

Duplicating Entities ringed, winged 
volatile-tongued professed Non-entity.

In depths estranged Life fled in procreative currents
and sounded rotundity.

Borne of dust, the stars dense and ablaze
convolved into Black-holes. Luminophagous.

My Elemental specks drawn in Eternal Pull
and disillusioned thus in Continuum I prolonged
in dark Cosmic shifts 
Where Nothing Belonged.


August, 1998


Bijja Rathnashikamani's Questions:

Here I am trying to say that there is actually nothing in the Heart of Matter as we can see in the atomic structure of the Elements.When you go on dividing the subatomic particles we can reach to Nothing finally. Similarly there is Life in Death and vice versa, I suppose according to philosophers. The word "luminophagous" probably is my own coinage for light-eating Black-holes. How far I could express my thinking?


Correspond with Bijja Rathnashikamani at
rashima@mailcity.com
with your ideas about this poem.




The Afterthought

At eventide an ethereal heaven eventuates
                                  at sealine.
Dusk-dusted breeze wafts subtle messages
slow-whispers therapeutic airs.
Vast dispersing vacuuity assuages
my dispirited dying soul.
Needles nascent from wavering veils
of weaving dark 
nimbly numbs my objective eye.
About the opacity of clustered clouds
speckle only the sporadic stars.
Slight light flings a flimsy luminescence.
Beat of musical waters splutters a thumping andante.
Murmurs no creature 
from slumberous stupefaction,
zephyr-whistle or tidal tussle.
A casuarina poses naked, reclusive 
in silence.

Passing muses pause...

A sudden brightening lightning strikes
a momentous panoramic flash. Late thunder
dominates neaptide rhythms.

Heart shakes with ebb and dub
Confides.
Have I undergone this Being?
An enlightened mood broods
The universe ever expands with Life beyond Death.
Far flung stars implode the heart of Matter.
But, the Genesis within you explodes
your chemical brains. 

And mind 
responds  battling for the Becoming
Even the lifelong learning wouldn't 
have given you the joy of this loneliness.
Even the penance unto death wouldn't 
have dealt you the Light of this 
beatific glimpse.


August, 1998


Bijja Rathnashikamani's Questions:

Here I tried to reconciliate my failing soul from the glimpse of Light, a heavenly wisdom showered upon my tired intellect. Am I clear in this expression?


Correspond with Bijja Rathnashikamani at
rashima@mailcity.com
with your ideas about this poem.



The Albany Poetry Workshop