Apr 29, 2019 Uncategorized
Questions, and a Perhaps-Answer
©April 29th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
I cannot bear violence, or ambition,
Nor hatefulness, or jealousy,
Nor rage, or the need for revenge.
Long ago, I understood these things,
Knew they were part of humanness.
Now, all I long for is stillness,
Even as I might feel a surge of lust,
Or rage, or hatred towards the haters.
But stillness can be death, too.
So, is any powerful feeling too much?
Can a longing for things to be simple
Make one simple?
Or, can weariness with all that is complex,
Making one yearn for a yes, or a no
Be a sign of looming immaturity?
Maybe.
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Apr 28, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Sea-Spun
©April 28th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Sea-glass, driftwood, seaweed, spume,
Sea-shells, mussels, jellies bloom.
Sunlight, moonlight, glints out-bid
By algae, jellyfish, sea-worms, squid –
Fill her human eyes with longing.
Make her dream of sea-belonging
Though her sea-arms aren’t quick,
Though her feet can’t seem to kick,
Though the deeps fill her with fear
Though the distance tempts her near,
Still, she watches from the cliff, and
Stills her heart, approaches, stands,
Far away, a whale-song brings her
To the brink. She sings an answer.
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Apr 27, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Stillness
©April 27th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Lying on snow, or on a stone floor
Looking up through glass, or through air,
I see everything shining like a voice
In a cathedral, or atop a mountain.
I hear the heartbeat of Earth,
And I am stilled into awe.
The sky bends and cups my face.
I could die happy, thus.
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Apr 26, 2019 Daily Life, Uncategorized
Post-midnight non-sequitors:
I like walnuts. Also, peanuts. And almonds. Sometimes cashews. Oh, and pistachios!
I like em-dashes.
I like the word “dash.”
Also, the word “panache.”
“Flair” and “Elan” are nice, too.
“Brio” has a dashing feel to it, though not an em-dashing feel.
I like “water” and “water-lilies” and “clangour,” and “clamour.”
I like water and air, although air is too … evanescent.
Apr 25, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
The Seduction of the Eternal Now
©April 25th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every minute passes, and with it
The memory of a moment of joy
And of sorrow for its passing.
To live in constant yearning,
And looking backward at all
That has been, helps me –
When I look at a flower and know
It will fade fast away,
And know that young beauty of spring
Will become tired autumn,
And see my hands, and know
They will become old.
Too much knowledge is
As dangerous as too little,
And I wish I didn’t know
With every cell in my body
That entropy is inevitable,
That it is in the order of things.
I would that I could
Sing my days away in eternal
Spring, leave thinking behind.
The eternal present seduces me –
I could bear stasis, this moment,
With music coming from the other room,
The hum of electricity in the air,
The knowledge that I can still move
With freedom, clarity, pride.
To do nothing holds a kind of pleasure.
And yet, and yet, I rush
Headlong into the next thing.
The suspense of living
Is like a surfeit of sweets,
And I want to meet Death halfway,
Rising from the table,
With a smile and an invitation
To sit down and join me.
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Apr 16, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Learning to Evolve
©April 16th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
You drown again, then emerge,
Delphinine, into the air,
Twisting and turning,
And sleep eludes you, you think,
But you dream, and dream, and dream,
Until the waking is a dream of waking,
And the dreaming a dream of waking.
And you walk on water, towards a distant shore
Where sylphs gather in the air, and dryads
Behind trees, and salamanders dancing
In flames that do not scorch, cool fire!
And they await you, Undine,
As you come closer, closer.
You reject the world of waking.
It is dull, plastic, a mere imitation,
Where you’ve loved, and lost,
And regained everything and everyone
A hundred times over.
You laugh, as the waves part beneath your
Extremities, which you cannot see,
Because you never look down, just up,
Just around, because there’s so much to see,
But, as you approach land,
The droplets flying off your slick, silken skin,
You wonder, briefly, about the element
From which you came, and,
Fighting the impulse not to do so,
You look down.
Below, you see all the faces of all
Whom you left behind, all who loved you,
Or were indifferent to you, or hated you,
Or whom you didn’t even know,
And even as you catch their startled
Fearful faces gazing up at you
Emerging from their world,
Poised to escape, to desert them,
The waters start rising upwards,
Until you find yourself sinking, sinking.
Waving to the dryads, the sylphs,
The salamanders, you let out a loud
Gasp, before you drown,
Once again in the world beneath.
Awake now, you find yourself
In the clutch of dry land,
Dry as hate, dry as death.
And you suck in a lungful
And learn to evolve.
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Apr 15, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Spring Walk
©April 15th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Forsythia brightens into yellow
And the grey air dances around it,
Like a sylph enraptured by matter.
The dog’s ears blow back
As we walk into the windy day.
It’s this simple:
You, and you, and I, and
Our sweet cloud-grey dog
Hold back the ravages of time
In singular moments.
It is this which I shall imprint
Into the clayey reaches of my mind
As the years pile on each other
And time with cruel fingers
Plucks away our memories.
At the end, when all is gone,
These will remain – these,
And other moments held in
Words, held in emotions,
Held in images held in
Words held in emotions held in
Images, while rain falls
Steadily, steadily down
Drawing a curtain over it all.
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Apr 15, 2019 Daily Life, Uncategorized
Virginia L. Senders, my m-in-l, now in the dementia unit of a nursing home in Amherst, still remembers the last two lines of “Invictus.” She also remembered several lines from “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” We visited her yesterday, and I read both poems aloud to her. At one point, I unthinkingly read the word “cur-sed” as “curst,” and she said, “I believe it’s cur-sed,” and I said, “Of course!”
And I was pleased, so pleased! She’s forgotten so much, and yet poetry remains within her.
I spoke to one of the attendants at the Dementia Unit, and she (the attendant) said that a few weeks earlier, she’d had a particularly difficult day, and burst into tears in front of Ginny. Ginny beckoned the woman to her, patted her, and said, “I’m sorry you’re having a difficult day. I’m still in here.”
The attendant is a lovely woman, who loves my mother-in-law. She told me she’d googled Ginny, and was in awe of her accomplishments, and sympathetic about her condition. I’m so glad she’s there. She told me some moving things about her conversations with Ginny.
And yet, Ginny’s statement – “I’m still in here” – broke my heart.
Whenever I visit, I take clementines and chocolate, because she loves them. It’s a simple gift, and one that brings a kind of simple, sensual pleasure. This time, I took her a children’s toy as well, a soft lamb, and she took it, and placed it against her cheek and shoulder, then gazed at it contemplatively, and said, “Now, what should I name him?”
I wish I had an accessible home (not one perched on a hill, with forty steps leading up). I wish we had an elder-friendly room and bathroom attached, so we could have Ginny with us. I wish Ginny could have normal conversations with people (I prattle away about my work or about plays, or about S’s homeschooling activities with her, and it’s plainly visible to see her coming alive, remembering a few more things than at the beginning of our visit). I wish she could have daily hugs and not go to bed in a room alone, and in a strange, disconnected state of mind. I wish we had the means to care for her, or to hire someone to care for her inside our home.
Then, I think, at least she has a room of her own, comfort, predictable time-tables, good care, nursing. And it comforts me, a little.
But that nagging feeling of loss isn’t going away.
This is a society in need of a radical overhaul.
And the sadness in those lines when I think of where she is:
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
Apr 14, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Into
©April 14th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
To see into the heart of things
Is to be burned by the sun.
And yet, and yet,
What if you cannot help it?
What if the sun pulls you
Ever onward, ever upward,
Until your wings, scorched,
Crackling with flame, blackened
Beyond repair, fall downwards,
As you ascend, despairing,
Not knowing whether that still point
Just before you fall,
Is the point that you reach
Into that heart, and pluck
It, and fling it far, far away?
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Mar 12, 2019 Uncategorized
How to Grow a Child
(A Poem For My Mother)
©March 12th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
In a deep, rich, red space
Of velvet blood, and floating womb,
The planet of the me-Child formed,
Heart, by lungs, by brain,
Arms, legs, fingers, toes.
I grew, while Her Voice sang
Marrow into my bones, nurtured me
With joyous longing, captured my
Floating, vague, growing essence,
Bathed me in music.
This is how to form into a person:
Note by note, song by song,
Beat by beat, cell by cell,
Lung by lung, corpuscle by corpuscle,
In time, and in tune, in song,
And in love.
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