The Partitioned Wailing-Wall
for Alan Painter*
I have put into many ports
labelled:
handle with care
stood on the wharfs, bare-shouldered
up to the knee, unloading
cashew and coconuts
and then set sail again
finding no substance to trade
with
I have seen the waters rising
and the walls submerge
the roofs converge
the children washed on
the battlements
I have heard the chasm cries
Stifled under jackboots
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poem by T. Wignesan
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The Best of the Night to you, too, Bala...
So you took the covert road of the night
and stalked me
while I listened to Vivaldi up to midnight
At two when you were ready to go
you woke me stunned stark in your memory
your impishly entrancing laughter
your dark bright pupils beaming through the slits of your tightly drawn
lids
your ivory teeth basking in uncontrollable mirth
your blacker than black ear-antennae and higher than high civil-
servant brows
marking your dark-diamond worth
your patience
your more than necessary feeling for the less than fortunate friends
and relatives
stretched cummerbund tight round your caring nature
How you knew how to share your luck
Always a little put out for your beneficiaries' putout-ness
Worrying speechless night after night lest your luck run out
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poem by T. Wignesan
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Stop writing Literature, You garrulous Indian
a life of toil for the man in the centre
a hub in the peripheral tireless wheel
where he go then where he go this working man
he go on waking people working at waking man
no words cling now no words meant in blame
the tongue he lash the words they now tame
no shock of blast open laughter rock the hall
everyman there say there sure were a man
a man no fear cowed in communion to other
made for no gods made for no demons either
all men he know best when he see just once
no second thought resurrect the man if bad
so go tell the magi no trek in sight in sky
here a man be born here he so sure die
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Non-Attached Action=Duty
« The doer of non-attached action is the most conscientious of men. Freed from fear and desire, he offers everything he does as a sacrement of devotion to his duty. All work becomes equally and vitally important. It is only toward the results of work - success or failure, praise or blame - that he remains indifferent. »
Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, transl.The Song of God, Bhagavad-Gita, NY: The New American Library,1972
« Every deed confirms the sense of egoism and separateness of the doer, and sets in motion a new series of effects. Therefore, it is argued, one must renounce all action and become a samnyasin. »
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, transl., The Bhagavadgita (London: Allen & Unwin) ,1949.
All things all thoughts
All signs point to the One Will testing itself
What real need is there
unless the Big Bang disperses the One Will
undertakes the shrinking universe
beyond the birth of Time
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Poems Omega Minus
I
For once he banished all birds
from the air
not just Mynas tick-picking
on twitching backs
but all birds, unnamed
and high bred
with each wave of his contrived hand
extending the pelting rice on the shorn land.
Some came to sort the heedless grain
in their hunger of disdain
Some fluttered from hump to hump
from his total need
to his clambering might.
Each time they came and went
he let them alone
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To The Author(s) Of Manimekhalai
'Apart from its popular conception of transmigration, (which is) sometimes almost humouristic, Manimekhalai offers a documentary contribution of immense value, under an easily accessible form, on the philosophical speculations of Ancient India. The cosmology of Sankya, the scientism of Vaisheshika, the logic of Nyaya, the materialism of Lokayata, originally related to the Ajivika tradition, (all of) which re-appeared with force in the Dravidian world following the Saivite renewal a little before the beginning of the Christian era. The(se) concepts which had little by little, during the course of centuries, influenced the Vedic tradition manifested themselves with force from then on in an autonomous way and went on to give birth to the philosophy of Mediaeval India.'
(From Alain Danielou's 'Preface' in his and T. V. Gopala Iyer's Manimékhalai)
To some the interest is in the reading hearing singing
To others in the Buddhist faith that moved the begetter(s)
To most the wondrous-unwonders of the story
born in the Cilappatikaram
To a few in the monstrous bending of the verse in
nilamantilavaciriyappa
To all time to parse in tongue-grinding heady rhymes
initial rhymes
end-rhymes
alliterations
antitheses
rigourous unsyntactic ellipses
double syllabic feet
four to the line
the exceptions in three
all a mnemonic scaffolding of repetitive sound
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Wake! Asia! Wake! (Part Two)
Part Two
Older in age
younger in growth
still heeding His Master's Voice
the Great swirling dark illiterate masses
led by less than nought point nought nought nought nought nought nought nought to the power of 32
who prefer nukes for toys
at the cost of common everyday joys
These that hanker after the departed master's pat on the back
for the Man-Booker
for the National Book Award
for the Fullbright
for the Visiting Professorship and/or IIAS Fellowship
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Blood' Brothers or 'Bloody' Brothers under the Banner
"A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half-remembered glory."
"A strong man makes a weak people. A strong people don't need a strong man."
John Steinbeck (Nobel Prize 1962)
for the DEAD in the Struggle for EELAM
I
Ages from now, let it not be said:
Blood spills only as brother dies.
Ages from now, let not peace be bled
By chances lost now in sighs.
To the high nor low slams the door
To him who seeks the Law and more.
Take, take the Golden Mean way!
Truth your only key, don't ever slay!
Where the elephant roams un-tethered free,
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Declining Change - X
GOU - Hexagram 44: One powerful Yin encounters or comes to meet the Yang in the Sixth month of the Gregorian Calendar, on the Sixth of June onwards - having associated with five (meaning any number) of them. The symbol of Sun, the eldest daughter, under Qian, the father; Sun, the wind, raging under Qian, the sky. the soft underside of the solid strong edifice: one broken line under five unbroken ones, a veritable open and free orifice that sucks, topples and breaches the closed Yang fortress.
When the encounter takes place on the sixth of the sixth month in the century's sixty-sixth year, for instance, of the last century, then anything may be possible: a whole people's mores suffer, and general decline sets in through slow rot.
According to Richard Lynn and Richard Wilhelm's translations: It would not do to marry such a woman. It must be brought swiftly under control by tying it to metal brakes, the Fourth Yang. The Yijing's commentators: Confucius, Wang Bi - take the broken line to signify 'woman' as Yin in their male-oriented society. Here, 'Yin' may be of either sex, though the 'sow', the 'lean pig' rests the book's cherished image. One such lesson - among many - then would be:
BEWARE beware of the Sixth of June
When everything begins to go out of tune
Though it be but the fifth month of the moon
On which the Yijing decides Yang's semesterly swoon
The dark abusive days diminish at the winter solstice
Fresh buds push inexorably under the icy parapet
Once again the earth awakens to right itself
After the skies close their eyes
To take a short nap
During the months of leisure
When work slows down
When Qian withdraws in August
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Is There An Exclusive All-in-One Principle
‘ In general, quantum mechanics does not predict a single definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of different possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these is. ‘
Which side of the Wolf-coin are we looking at
the red or the green
nothing then is certain
not even death but the life one endures
quarks protons neutrons electronsbosons
particles like men and beings in general
bathe not necessarily in the same lifeless soup
great teachers or rather teachers with great followings
those that always attract those who prefer to let others do the thinking for them
especially through transcendentally transmitted interstellar telegraphy
would want us believe
there's just This One
and all comes and goes to That Only ONE
If only it were just as simple as that
Then what is it that This One wants
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