My Father’s Photographs of India

 
My Father’s Photographs of India

There's happiness and even joy
Within this world we’re in,
Yet measured out to just a few—
Or so it seems to me—

As humans, all together, shape
The human world and more,
With just a few in leading roles
And others pulled in line.

But when I look at photographs
My father once had taken,
Along with images of woe—
Of famines, riots, flights— 

And those of workers under stress
In factories, sewers, mines—
I see the faces—calm, composed,

And even smiling wide—

Of peasants in the villages
Among the hills and plains,
Of tribal folk in dignity—
Not bowed, but standing straight—

Of people living common lives—
But not in misery,
In poses, choreographed, it seems,
Within a flowing dance. 

******

The interruption of that dance—
The speeding of the pace—
The separation, competition—
Is what we humans face.

******   

Inequities of ages, borne
By those who worked the hardest—
Those still persist, but added on
Are pressures more destructive.

We each can shrug and say, “So what?”
Or say that this was destined,
Or pause, reflect, and ask if we
Have choices still for freedom.

That word—it once had resonance
And gave the people hope
In struggles that they fought and won
Or lost—while still persisting.

So every generation must
Do battle in its turn—
Not giving in to cynics or
To apathy or fear.

Yet those who care and those who dare
Are few and far between. 
The rest of us would rather shut
Our eyes to cruelest sins.

****** 

I see the images on screen
Of what is happening now—
And I am sickened to the core—
As long ago I’d been

When working with the refugees,
In nineteen-seventy-one,
Who’d left behind their homes and farms
To flee across a border.

How difficult it is for me,
Now even more than then,
To watch this manmade suffering,
And see no end in sight.

And yet, I look at photographs
My father took of those
Who died when people rose to greet
The “Naval Mutiny”.

And lo—the women, children, men,
Who lie there, stripped and dead,
With bullets through their heads or chests,
Are clothed in radiance.

2024 July 30th, Tue.
Berkeley, California

I Wrote Me a Song

I Wrote Me a Song

https://www.facebook.com/arjun.janah/posts/10154543106580950

I wrote me a song in a minute or ten.
I don't know the why and I don't know the when.
It came to my mind and it came to my pen,
And I wrote out those verses for women and men.

I wrote me a song in a minute or two.
She asked me to write it—I don't know who.
I wrote it for her and I wrote it for you.
I wrote it because that's just what I do.

Was there a reason for writing that song?
Did I wish to set right what was clearly so wrong?
You can pick your own reason, and argue it strong.
But I hadn't a reason. I just wrote me a song.

2017 April 13th, Thu.
Brooklyn, New York

https://www.facebook.com/arjun.janah/posts/10154543106580950

Love's Labor Lost--Broverbs for Valentine's Day

Love's Labor Lost?
(Broverbs for Valentine's Day)
    
We can sit and scribe our verses
From now until we die,
But who, if asked to read them,
Will find a reason why?
 
We can sow our seeds of wisdom--
And weep, that all our toil
Was wasted, since the seedings
Were all on barren soil.
 
We can spend our waking lifetimes
In struggles, pay the cost
From what we left neglected,
Yet see our labors lost.
 
We can teach and we can nurture;
We can fuss, as carers must.
We can build, with patience, structures--
And see them turn to dust.
  
****** 
  
So when we're in the twilight,
With darkness drawing near,
We then might slow from slaving
And pause to shed a tear.
  
But then it's time to wipe it
And wistfully to smile,
For if, with heart, we labored,
It was surely worth our while.
 
And if some satisfaction,
Some pleasure in the task,
For a year or for an instant,
Was ours--what's left to ask?
 
Let's leave what's past to others,
And what's to come to fate.
The present time is precious
And not for waste in hate.
  
****** 
  
There's joy in our creations,
However small they be.
We bring them through gestations
And then we set them free.
 
Like children, they may flourish.
Like seedlings, they may die.
How many are our hatchlings--
How few will live to fly?
 
We seek for recognition.
A smidgen should suffice.
We warm our hands with praises--
For soon, we'll meet with ice.
  
Our children may be stolen.
With broken hearts, we cry.
But if we know they're tended,
With souls content, we die.
  
******
  
We labor for the joy of it.
We labor for our bread.
We labor for the smile we get,
From duty and from dread.
  
And when we shirk our labor,
We're often in torment.
Some say they live for pleasure,
Yet rarely are content.
  
Our lives are often muddles.
What hubris, then, to say
It's pleasure, love or duty
Or work that clears the way.
 
We can live for just this instant;
We can live for what we lost;
We can live to build the future.
In each, there's always cost.
  
******
 
And those, who're truly humble,
Of their virtues, might be proud,
But equally, of those failings
That they rarely speak of loud.
 
For those, who see no failings
In themselves, are surely blind,
And those, who see them clearest,
Are souls of deepest mind.
 
A vice that's partly conquered
Is like a foe defeated;
It's best to leave it extant,
Lest hubris be repeated.
  
The greatest pride of humans,
We're told, is that of pride.
Yet pride, in honest labor,
Is a lion each can ride.

****** 
 
In all things, there's a balance;
There's yang that waits in yin.
Too little--and we're tortured;
Too much--and we're in sin.
    
What's savored best at leisure
Is rarely sensed in haste.
Who never knows of hunger,
Can scarcely know of taste.

So too, a length of failure
Lends flavor to success.
And each is best, not scanty
But neither in excess.
   
Let's take what we are given--
And that, with gratitude.
Why pine for what was owed us?
We owe, in plenitude.
 
2016 February 14th, Sun.
Brooklyn, New York
   

Blowing Dust

Blowing Dust (Draft)

It’s difficult, and yet it’s best, to learn
That all we have and everything we’ve built,
We each will lose—that all will be as dust—
The dust that blows, to which we will return.

And yet, when we and those we know are gone,
The birds will chirp to greet again the dawn.
And crickets will be loud at eventide,
As one by one the stars begin to show.
 
******
 
A long procession winds its way through time.
How many went before upon our paths?
How many still to come?  We walk alone
Amidst the crowds, and yet in company.

So as I wipe away the dust that clings
To books I’m packing, those I’ve read and those
I hope to read before I lose my sight,
I wonder at the dust—and wonder more.

Whose dust is this?  How many beings past
Are touched by me, who cannot feel my touch?
Could books attract the dust of scholars who
Had loved their books as I do mine—and more?

A foolish thought—and yet I wonder where
My sister’s ashes, that the river took,
Are wandering—and if perhaps, by chance,
A particle might settle on her book.

My parents’ ashes have been waiting long.
And still I hope that if I can retire,
I’ll free them, like I did my sister’s, while
I leave a sprinkling on the book they wrote.

******

My sister and my parents could not see,
In print, the books on which they’d spent their years.
And I but rarely leaf through them, because
I fear I’ll stain the pages with my tears.
 
A book, when extant, might extend a life
Beyond the death of body and of mind.
As books are read, the authors come alive
And speak to those that death has left behind.

And it’s the same with photographs and more—
And all the work we did that’s left a mark—
Perhaps within a mind or heart—before
Our turn to turn again to blowing dust.

How few are those, who have their books or art
Or other free creations published, known
Beyond a tiny circle?  Each yet leaves
Their little ripples that subside with time.

And that’s enough.  And even if we die
And none remembers that we were, it is
Sufficient that we lived our little while—
No more, no less than ants or leaves—and died.
 
******
 
Our mornings and our evenings come in turn.
We’re born to be interred or else to burn.
And in-between, we do what beings do,
To leave behind, perhaps, a trace or two.
 
A mortal should accept the mortal fate—
Which is to vanish, be deleted, go.
For all we were and all we did will be
As this—the dust on which I gently blow.

2015 August 11th, Tue, 8:15 pm
(fourth-from-last and third-from-last stanzas
 added August 12th, Wed. morning, third 
stanza added August 14th, Fri. morning)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
     

Versus my Verses

 
Versus my Verses

I fill the voids with scribblings such as these,
which serve to soothe my troubled soul a while.
And yet I know the issues I avoid
will still remain to plague this ailing mind.
 
Our angels, demons wait for vacant times
to show themselves.  So good and evil, both,
and beauty, horror go unrecognized
until we find the time to stop and see.
 
And if, indeed, the time I take to write
these verses gives me chances still to be,
to gather in my scattered parts, to take
then stock – and so reflect, it’s time well spent.
 
But if, instead, I merely seek release
or refuge from the stresses of my life,
then every line I write appears to be
another ruse to fool my remnant sense.
 
******
 
We travel, each, upon our roads of life,
and some may find a pleasant walk awhile.
But then, the bandits and the dark ravines
appear.  We’re beaten, broken – and we fear.

So some of us may turn to alcohol,
while others do as they are told by thugs.
And others yet, who’re drained of strength to fight,
may pen their verses, be these light or dark.

And some may write and keep their writings hidden,
while others visit these on readers’ heads.
And in my case, I do this, though unbidden,
and hope to leave some threads of sense behind.
 
But then, I wonder if my foolishness
is even greater than I once had thought,
and whether all the twine I twist and weave
will quickly fray to shreds and disappear.
   
No matter – verse, like beer, gives pleasure still
to those who brew it and to those who swill.
As bodies rot, so also words will fade.
There’s still delight, when verse, like life, is made.

So when, in darker moods, I find I curse
at all the time I've spent on writing verse,
I hear again that whisper of the muse
that bid me write – although it came out worse.
 
******

And so it is that verses come and go,
resolving nothing, much as children might
that mothers bear and then must tend until
they’re grown enough to face the cruel world.

But mothers spend their years on rearing kids,
and many fathers also do their share.
But poets like me are careless parents, for
they give their verses life and let them go.

And so I might condemn this work I do,
if not that endless toil I do for school,
where I’m a parent faux, for a year or term,
to children, often seven score or more.

Perhaps that other labor, more intense
and longer, far, might justify the verse.
Indeed, that’s what has led to it – and yet
I look at both and wonder – whither, why?

2015 April 17th Fri, 18th Sat & 20th Mon 
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I wrote the first four stanzas of this piece on 2015 April 17th Friday, around 8 pm, after leaving the school where I work.  I wrote them while sitting on a “park” bench near the "Liberty Pole" and the New Utrecht Church, by 18th Avenue and 84th Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. 
    

Liberty Pole and New Utrecht Dutch Reformed Church
18th Avenue & 84th Street, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
https://www.flickr.com/photos/34127825@N03/3243329788/

   
    

The pole was first erected in 1783, at the end of the revolutionary war with Britain. 

Top of New Utrecht Liberty Pole
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mateox/4980141745/

   

The New Utrecht Church was originally at a site, next to an old Dutch cemetery, that is now two long blocks away, on 16th and 84th.  It was completed in 1700 and stood there for over a century.  The church was rebuilt, in 1828-29, at its present site, using material from the original building.

  

New Utrecht Dutch Reformed Church
18th Ave & 84th St, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
http://www.historicnewutrecht.org/gallery/New_Utrecht_Reformed_Church.html

   

    

    





The cemetery, still standing, dates back to 1654.
  

New Utrecht Cemetery, 16th Avenue & 84th Street, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mateox/4980131333/

 
http://www.historicnewutrecht.org/History.html

http://www.newutrechtchurch.org/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Utrecht_Reformed_Church
  
The middle six stanzas (after the first break) were written the next day, at the Pakistani restaurant (Skyway) on Bath Avenue, between 20th and 21st Avenues, Bensonhurst.
  
The last four stanzas (after the second break) were added at home, in the early morning of  April 20th, Monday, before leaving for work.