Feb 26, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Orpheus (and I)
©February 26th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every day, the idea of oblivion
Entices, lures, coaxes me ever closer.
I resist, then press on towards it.
And I resist again.
There is a river whose name
I forget, remembering pain, and forget.
Once, I crossed over, and returned
How, I know not. Yet, it calls.
Now, I play my music, but it’s
The ghost of someone who plays:
The ghost of a beloved memory
Who lets her fingers
Stray dreamily over the lyre.
The stones speak.
The woods stir.
Animals gather round.
They come closer and closer.
I do not greet them.
They sit in silence around me.
They bring some solace.
Sunlight plays over my head
Like the fingers of my beloved
I see strings stretched across it.
I play it, and rain falls, flowing
Over my cheeks, like the river
Of forgetting, bleak, cold.
See over there?
Somewhere beyond those hills,
Women beckon, red-eyed, long-nailed,
Wild-haired, naked, wine-stained,
And manic, ready to wreck my life.
They fill me with terror,
Yet, I’m strangely drawn to them
As if an error of blood, of rage
Connects me to them, an error of fate.
Someone long ago, from the future
Said to me, “Avoid them.”
I forget who it was,
A poet, I think.
She treasured my music.
She wept over my lost love.
She wrote about my sorrow.
And she said, “Stay here.
These woods, these animals
Will love you and protect you.
Play your music for them.”
I do not listen to her words.
She was born of my mind, a mere
Figment, a fragment of a future
That didn’t exist, because it hadn’t
Come into being, because I
Didn’t sing of it, because I
Couldn’t picture it, because I
Abhorred the future, because i
Loathed the present, because I
Wanted to live and die in the past.
I leave that place, weeping
For my lost love.
The trees weep with me, and animals
Follow, forlorn, seeking comfort
From one who is bereft of it.
The hills call.
Maenads beckon.
I am come to meet
A fate I cannot fathom.
A seek an end to this.
I seek my beloved.
I hear her call, even
As I am torn.
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Tags: #GreekMythology, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Orpheus
Apr 7, 2014 Uncategorized
Exhortation
(OR Who the Hell Knows What This Is About?!)
©April 7, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Force the wo-
rds
Cor-
ral them, he-
rd them
Cro
wd them, ha-
rass them
Cow them into sub-
Put them on the boat
That awaits all words.
Yes!
(Poetry thrives on this –
The fear of silence.
Prose does, too.
Except that it has
So much more space,
So much more leeway.
So much wind blowing
Madly through chapters,
Stirring our consciences,
Making us stammer out
Confessions.)
And, like a silken thread
Running palely blue and gold
Between words and worlds,
Silence glows,
A Presence
Waiting to be glimpsed,
An Absence
For whom we yearn.
Death can wait.
Death knows how.
Death lies low
Waiting to spring
From the shadowy recesses,
Near where Charon waits.
And Life turns
Her head, as she flees
The Silence,
While the words
Become a ghost,
Wailing for her
Orpheus, us.
And all around us,
Roll her echoes,
As we climb, sobbing
Into the light.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo, #Original Poetry, #Orpheus, Charon, Escape from Hades, Life and Death, Sound and Silence