Tides and Seasons

   

  

Tides and Seasons 

The seasons come; the seasons go in turn,

As Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer dance

As they had done, with other seasons too,

In days gone by, preceding me and you.

  

How many worlds within this universe!

How many universes come and gone! 

How many beings, born to live and die,

With no one knowing whence or whither, why!

  

The seasons of our lives can last a while

Or swiftly pass. We’re left with memories

Of faces, scenes, and cares and passions past

That stay with us as long as breathings last.

  

The Ocean’s tides and those that rise and ebb,

Within us each and also all around,

Have varied strengths and varied rhythms, yet

They harmonize in ways that we forget.

   

The balances that pulse and oscillate

Around the means are what our beings sense

And so we dance with these—the seasons, tides

That bring us life with all its turning rides.

   

2026 February 24th, Tue.

Berkeley, California

  

Din ket'e jae-দিন কেটে যায়

 
দিন কেটে যায়
 
গির্জা ঘরে ঘন্টা বাজে, 
দিন কেটে যায়, ওরে। 
সপ্তাহ্, মাস আর বছর কাটে, 
ঋতু, বেলার ঘোরে।
 
জন্ম-জীবন-মরণ লীলায় 
জীবের জগৎ দোলে। 
নতুন জীবন পেয়ে জীবি 
পুরনো জীবন ভোলে।
  
নীল গগনে মেঘ উড়ে যায়, 
দিন চলে যায় ভেসে। 
শ্বাসের সাথে স্মৃতির সারি 
বিদায় নেবে শেষে। 
 
কোন্ জগতে জন্ম আবার 
চোখ বোজবার পরে? 
রাতের শেষে প্রথম আলোয় 
জাগবো কাদের ঘরে?

 

শনিবার, ২০ জুলাই, ২০২২ খ্রি

বার্ক্লি, কালিফোর্নিয়া

Boyhood in Kolkata

Boyhood in Kolkata
 
My childhood was untroubled. Calm in mind,
Though often ill in body, I absorbed,
As children do, the cultures all around—
The near ones more, the far ones less—and yet,
When still a child, I felt a growing sense
Of some detachment. I could see the plays
In which the humans seemed to act, in roles
With which they seemed to merge their inner selves.
And these, I sensed, were really all the same—
For humans, dogs and cats—and ants and trees.
 
For reasons still unclear to me, I had
Begun reflecting—perhaps when I was ill
And so alone, with time enough to think—
And being also lacking then in drives
For recognition, power or other things—
And seeing also, in the city’s mire,
How people suffered, while, above the streets,
The clouds rose high and sailed across the blue—
As seasons came and seasons went in turn—
As beings did, who acted out their plays.
 
2022 October 25^th, Tue.
Brooklyn, New York

  

Echoes-II

Echoes-II

We each are echoes of the ones who've gone,
As they had been of those who'd gone before,
And those will be who follow us in turn.

So each bestrides this stage that we are on
To play a part and then to be no more—
Except as whispers in the earth or urn.

******

The air we breathe and all that's in our bones
Have been dispersed a myriad times before
And so will be again and yet again.

And every word we speak, the silent stones
Have surely heard—and kept within a store,
In which there's still the pleasure and the pain.

******

So if we listen, with our ears and eyes,
We still might find, between the words we speak
And all our actions, those of others past.

How many greetings, smiles and sad goodbyes—
How many rhythms, pulsing strong or weak—
How many echoes, fading slow or fast...

******

So every thought, like every passing cloud,
Has siblings in the future and the past—
And every life is but a stanza more.

So hear the waters murmur soft and loud,
“Of all our ripples, which is first or last?
We each are echoes of the ones before.”

Blue Ridge Mountains
source: unknown

Coney Island bound D train 
between Atlantic Ave & 79th St
Brooklyn, New York
2018 February 1st, Thu. 
---------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Related:
Echoes (http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2015/09/echoes.html)

Metaphysics

  
Metaphysics
 
Is the universe a solid, if we add to space the time?
Then all’s predestination.  Yes, my verses still have rhyme,
but more – because, in choosing, I really have no choice.
The word I use to rhyme with is chosen – and this voice
is saying what it’s saying, because the future’s known.
So none of us may claim to act with a will that is one’s own.
 
But if, beside the time, there is at least another thing
that varies, then each instant is a bird upon the wing.
The future of the universe can never be predicted,
for every tiny particle, even undetected,
can vary in the path it takes – and there’s no way to know.
The universe is fluid then, with myriad ways to flow.
 
And since, besides, each little flow can alter yet another,
and if, in probing how to flow, each flowing speaks to brother,
the universes that might rise affect then one another,
And so, of all complexities, we have, in this, the mother!
But since I play at poetry, and not in metaphysics,
it’s time to exit quietly and end these weird lyrics…
 
2014 December 21st, Sun. 11:08 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
   

When the Winter Wind Is Blowing

 
When the Winter Wind Is Blowing
 
When the winter wind is blowing and the nights are freezing cold,
I will venture in the alley and I’ll look up at the sky.
And I’ll see, above the city, in the darkness, burning stars.
In the crystal air of winter, it will seem that they are near.

And though I cannot touch them, they will reach into my past –
A past I cannot speak of, a history unwritten,
That still is in awareness – that is distant, like the stars,
But is waiting for remembrance, like the shadow by my side.

For the self has not forgotten all the beings it has been.
And the mind has not forgotten all the visions it has seen.
Through the ages and the eons, they’ve been layered deep beneath…
So I’ll shiver in that alley, as I gaze up at the stars…
 
When this body-soul is vanished, and the traces of it lost,
Will another, from an abyss, in a cloudless season, see
The fires that burn in darkness, like the beacons that they are?
Will that being stare and shiver, in its wonder and its fear?

Through the eons and the ages, as the sun went up and down,
As it traveled north and southwards and as Luna waxed and waned,
The stars have crossed the heavens of this place we call the Earth.
How many eyes have seen them, from this planet of their birth?

How many more, on planets that are whirling 'round the stars,
Have gazed at them in wonder – from the distant, distant past
To the present – and in future will be gawking at them still?
How many eyes united, by their visions of the all?

When the winter wind is blowing and the water’s turned to ice,
I will see the star-fires burning, in the darkness of the night.
And in my recollection, there’ll be stirrings of the past,
And the part of me that’s speechless will be spellbound at the sight…
     
2014 December 18th, Thu.
Brooklyn, New York
 

Reflections on a Tree

   
Reflections on a Tree
  
While slowly walking home this evening, I
Observed a tree that reached towards the sky.
It stood, with all its myriad fingers splayed,
And to a winter moon, in silence prayed.

I wondered if that still and silent tree
Was linked, by consciousness, to you and me.
It stood, beneath the sun and moon and stars,
A witness to our lives and loves and wars.

And surely it cared little for our kind,
That prides itself on nimbleness of mind,
While knowing more, of light and earth and air,
Than you or I could ever know or care.

But if in truth, of mind there is but one,
It shared with us, who hither, thither run,
That same awareness, but of aspect slowed,
While standing still, beside a city road.

2014 February 14th, Fri. 7:54 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
   

The Puzzle

The Puzzle

She asked him why he left her, but he never did reply.
So she was left to figure out the real reason why.
And though the years have come and gone, that puzzle still remains,
That never will be solved by her, whose time has come to die.

How many years, how many years, of asking for the reason...
How many tears, how many tears, on day and month of season,
The day and month on which he left, as autumn then was ending...
And still she pays, as ending nears, the price for lover's treason....

How lightly men may leave the maidens whom they courted, won...
How sadly ends the dalliance so happily begun...
How deep the wound that rarely heals, though time attempts its cure,
How strange that some have hearts with space for one -- and only one.

How many pitfalls life may lay upon a mortal's way,
How many traps that snare the one who stops from saying, "Nay."
How many mothers warn their girls, who yet succumb to love,
How many men, who leave the maid, with whom they've had their way...

When she was young, she tried, in vain, to youthful heart defend.
Now death approaches and she nears her tortuous journey's end.
We wonder if she'll ever have a chance to live again,
And in that life, for errors past, another will amend.

2013 September 18th, Wed.
Brooklyn
 

Teachers' Cafeteria--Part I

Teachers' Cafeteria
 
Part I

I was sitting in the silence
Of the basement cafeteria,
Towards the ending of the school day,
With all the teachers gone.

I was sitting in that silence,
In that oasis of quiet,
And I heard a constant humming
That I couldn't really trace.

So I sat there and I listened
And I wondered what it was.
Perhaps it was the humming
Of machines – perhaps of pumps.

It was cold there in the basement,
Though all the lights were on.
The lights were all fluorescent,
So they didn't warm at all.

And the quality of air there,
I'd noticed, wasn't best.
I breathed a little deeper
And I thought to take a rest.

So I looked towards the couches –
Inviting, checkered green –
And I briefly thought of taking
A little nap, unseen.

But no – I looked and saw then,
From the clock upon the wall,
That the bell would soon be ringing,
So I couldn't rest at all.

The school day, it had ended,
But the work had now begun.
For three more hours, I'd labor,
And at six, I'd have to run.

For if they found me staying,
For much beyond that six,
They'd said they'd call policemen,
Who'd come for me with sticks.

2013 mid-September
teachers' cafeteria, basement, New Utrecht High School
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Notes:

Please see also: 

   Teachers' Lounge

    http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2006/01/teachers-lounge.html

Those verses were written in the teacher's lounge of the Brooklyn Studio Secondary school, when I had begun subbing again after working for a year at the nearby New Utrecht High School.  Teachers' lounges are a rarity in the New York City public school system.

The Brooklyn Studio Secondary School is in the Bensonhurst district of southwestern Brooklyn.  The building is on 21st Avenue, between 83rd St. and 84th  St.  It contains both a senior high school (grades  9-12) and a junior high school (grades 6-8).  An adjoining building (which can be accessed from the basement) houses an elementary school (kindergarten to grade 5).  There was a time when a student might spend all his/her years of K-12 schooling in those two buildings.

The New Utrecht High School is also in Bensonhurst.  The school building stands between 79th and 80th Streets and between 16th and New Utrecht Avenues.  This six-story building, which towers above the surrounding residential ones, can be clearly seen on Google Earth, along with the school's playing field and the elevated train tracks over New Utrecht Avenue.

Both of these schools must be close to a hundred years old.  When I looked up their buildings on the NY City Map website, at http://maps.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/,  I found that the current buildings for the Brooklyn Studio Secondary School and the New Utrecht High School have official construction dates of 1909 and 1931 respectively.  However, I think that the original school at the first site commenced operation a few years later, around 1913, which would make the school there, in all its incarnations, a century old as of now (2013), while the second (New Utrecht) started a few years later.

Please see also:

   Teachers' Cafeteria--Part II

   http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2013/10/teachers-cafeteria-part-ii.html

Interwoven

   

Interwoven

                  

The past, the present and the future are

As interwoven as the tribes of men.

Who posits, simply, “That and they are other!”

Forgets his birth and therefore shuns his brother.

So men are blinded and they go to war.

And yet, in battle, each can other ken,

When slaughter's done, and plunderer then finds

A little note that him, of home, reminds.

******

We leave our homes and often travel far,

We think that now is different from then,

But actions past, that rippled out, return

And at our journey's end, we homewards turn

Our ethics may no longer serve to bar

Such actions as might harm our fellow men,

But everything we do has consequences

That only are revealed in future tenses.

2013 September 1, Sat. 3:50 am..
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
 

Rites of Passage / Vespertinal

  
Rites of Passage / Vespertinal
  
The seven-horse chariot's done its daily beat; 
And over there, where sky and earth commune,
The evening star sheds limpid, icy fire 
Against a cyclorama amber-blue.
  
A breeze from west, gently insistent, blows 
Streamers of sand off crests of velvet dunes, 
Whispering reminder, prickly on the soul: 
The intimation of a threshold passed.

Through dim and misty distances in time
Loom memories of dreams that went unlived; 
Of songs unsung, of feelings unrevealed; 
Of deeds not done, of promises unkept; 

Of cheery smiles received and not returned; 
Of leaps of faith across uncharted streams 
Landing in quicksand, and being helped from there 
By waiting arms that never stayed for thanks.

And as the canvas is daubed more and more, 
The tints turn muddy, chiaroscuro fades 
To shades of grey, darkly illumined from 
The tunnel's end, a weary age away.

Threescore-and-ten was granted, half is spent. 
What rests is but a half-life of decay, 
Of keeping count of acts, noble and base, 
At every rite of passage on the way. 

Vivek  Khadpekar 
Osian, Thar Desert, Rajasthan
and Benares (Varanasi)
India, 1988/89 
 
By the same author:  Midnight

Meetings

  
Meetings
  
Where shall we meet in the gloaming,
When shall I see you again?
There's so little of time remaining –
And yet it is time yet again...

******

Shall we meet by chance on a country road,
As the end of the day is coming?
And shall we dally there awhile,
With the crickets loudly humming?

Or shall I find you by a lake,
On another day, at evenfall?
And shall we linger by the shore,
As the frogs and the birds returning call?

Or shall we meet  in a wooded glen,
At the sunset hour, in another season?
And shall we stand there, in the dusk,
And wonder then if there's a reason?

Shall we cross upon the field,
At twilight, in another year?
Will you know that it is me,
And will I know that you are near?

******

We met and walked together awhile,
And then, in time, we parted.
But still, I think of you and smile,
Who far too soon departed...

I always feel that we'll meet again,
But then again we'll part.
And so it's always the end of the day,
When I sense that you are there.

But if I smile as the sun goes down,
Will I weep in the light of the dawning,
As I see you walking on the dew-wet grass,
And I know that you're gone forever?

How sad is the gloom of the evening,
How glad is the sun of the morn...
And yet, when I think of your passing,
I smile as I weep that you're gone.

******

Where shall we meet in the gloaming,
When shall I see you again?
There's so little of time remaining –
And yet it is time yet again...

2013 July 27th, Sat.
Brooklyn   
   

Remembering / Infidelities

Remembering / Infidelities
  
The pigeons, having courted, hatched their eggs,
Are busy feeding their insistent young,
And so are little birds that dart from trees,
Whose limbs are now with verdant vestments hung.

But beasts are blessed and cursed with memory –
And they can see the future too at times.
And so, while still in summer's hot embrace,
I lie with other seasons in my rhymes...

While walking underneath a brilliant sun,
As summer spreads its spell of warmth and light,
I still remember well the spring, the fall,
The winter's cold – the dark of longest night...

******

For summer's end, by orbit is ordained,
As every day the sun goes slowly south.
And this is known to birds as well as men –
With winter's breath on twig in sparrow's mouth...

The seasons dance in circles 'round and 'round,
And each has qualities that are its own.
In winter, I will walk this street again,
Remembering the summers I have known...

******
 
It's said that men are polygamous, while
The women are a monogamous lot.
I doubt that this is true, but then I smile,
Remembering I've stirred proverbial pot...

For though I have been faithful to my spouse,
As much, perhaps, by circumstance as will,
I still have lain in every season's bed,
And striven, there, to comic roles fulfill.

And since I then retained those memories,
I once recited verses in my sleep.
And those, who heard, then looked at me in doubt,
As all my secrets they could share – or keep.

2013 July 14th, 5:30 pm–6:30 pm
(walking on Bath & Benson Avenues
between 18th & 19th Avenues – and 
seated at the Guatemalan diner at 
the corner of Benson & 18th)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
  

At Springtime

  
    At Springtime

A tree is white with flower,
    Another's tender green.
And yet another's waiting
    For season soft, serene.

At threshold, Spring is knocking
    As Winter bids goodbye,
The little birds are chirping
    And laughter's in the sky.

At curbside, lies a sparrow
    That's bleeding from her neck.
Her head, alas, is missing,
    Her body is a wreck.

But who, at her, is looking,
    On such a glorious day,
When clouds above have parted
    And April hints at May?

The days are slightly warmer,
    The tulips rise up, red,
And there's a new beginning
    For what appeared as dead.

So when will you be coming,
    Who left in wintertime,
To join with us in singing
    At Resurrection-time?

The body's gone, the spirit
    Is wandering, some will say.
As winter ends, this April,
    The Jews and Christians pray.

The Jews remember Egypt
    And their insistent God.
The Christians say their Jesus
    Rose up and is their Lord.

But since I'm not a Christian
    And even less a Jew,
I often wish, at springtime,
    The one, who'd rise, were you.

Some weeks ago, at Holi,
    The colors flew in Hind,
And earlier, in Persia,
    The bonfires waved in wind.

The spring is like the morning,
    The summer like the day,
And autumn's like the evening,
    When daylight fades away.

And then, there is the winter,
    In colder climes, like night.
And that is when you left us.
    You always did what's right.

So though there's condemnation,
    The ones, who knew you well,
Remember that, for justice,
    Our honored martyrs fell.

And you preserved your honor,
    At price that was unjust.
And so, at every Easter,
    In grace, we put our trust.

For parents lost to falsehoods,
    How many children cry!
For Clan or God or Mammon,
    How many more will die?

How many are the parents,
    Through aeons stretching dim,
Who lost their precious children
    To Man's or Fortune's whim?

Will there be Resurrection,
    As ardently believed?
This sparrow, lying headless,
    By traffic, was deceived.

If there's a resurrection,
    This sparrow then will fly.
And you will then be smiling,
    And so, perhaps, will I.

You mother and your father,
    The one you took for spouse,
Will be, with you, united,
    In that ethereal house.

    Babui / Arjun
        2011 April 20th, Wed.
    Brooklyn  

On Such a Night

    
On Such a Night

    

On such a night, with moonbeams gliding

Through the windows, we

Lay side by side, as scents of rose

And jasmine mingled free.

Now once again, we see that moon,

And a sky that's filled with stars.

The flowers in their vases swoon,

And men still wage their wars.

One by one, the flowers die,

And so do we, my love.

But see -- this moon that rises, sets,

These stars that shine above.

Though one by one, the flowers droop,

Whose scents and colors fade,

On every morn, the sun will rise

And there'll be light and shade.

When you and I are memory,

A dim, receding spark,

The sun and moon and stars will whirl

Through skies of light and dark.

The clouds that race on surging winds,

The mists that rise at dawn,

Our brethren, these, will rise and race

When you and I are gone.

And when our memories have passed

Away like drifting mist,

Then lovers new will witness still

Such nights, by moonlight kissed.

And in their turn, the sun and moon

And stars will pass away,

And long before, this life on Earth,

As fleeting as the day.

But yet, on a planet distant, where

The moons may number three,

Such beings still will rise and mate

As equal you and me.

Babui / Arjun

2010 December 4th, Sat.

Brooklyn

      
On Such a Night--II 
   

Four Avas and One Holly

  
The two poems below were inspired by real women, Ava and Holly, whom I knew and admired from a distance.
 
I have put the two poems together here, because both were born rather spontaneously, and both have persisted for a long time in my mind. When I wrote them, it seemed to me that the poems already existed, in a platonic, non-material sense, and that I was but the vehicle, by  happenstance, for their materialization. Yet, no doubt, both “Ava” and “Holly” were examples of my own unconscious mind at work, with the language and sentimentality reflecting my own limitations. 

==============================================

Holly
  
Lonely Holly, sad-eyed Holly,
Share with me your melancholy.
Speak no words -- but let your eyes
Speak to me and make me wise.


Arjun Janah <  sjanah@aol.com  >
College Park, Maryland, 1970’s
  
Notes
  
The four lines that make up "Holly", above, entered my mind one day --  almost readymade, as it were, in the 1970's.  The lines seem to have been jingling quietly inside my head ever since, since I had no difficulty, today, recalling the words, written almost thirty years ago.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com >
Brooklyn, New York. 2006 March 4.
============================================== 
   
Below is a poem, "Ava", that has been rearranged into four parts.  These four parts were originally one poem, entitled “Doggerel for Ava”, written around 1991.
 
At that time, a colleague, Ava, and I came to have a friendship, almost as if of cousins. Between us, there was a connection, or recognition, that both of us acknowledged, but could not explain.

The spirit of the poem below, if not the actual language, seemed to come from this temporary, shared connection to something beyond our temporal selves.  As is clear in the poem, a memory seems to have been awakened -- a memory that was not of our present conscious lifetimes.  Was it an unconscious fantasy, a memory of a dream, deja vu, or something else?  I do not know.
  
Ava, Part 1 -- Recollection
  
On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

At dawn, up on the mountain,
In the mist you passed me by,
I saw the wind lift up your headdress,
And your eyes were like the sky.

That morning, on the meadow,
Whose feet, so wet with dew?
I lifted up my eyes and saw
That selfsame, smiling you.

At noontime, in the forest,
I felt your presence near.
You turned your head and saw me,
And startled like a deer.

In the silence of the desert,
I saw you from afar;
And lost you in the shimmer
Of sand and heated air.

At sunset, by the river,
With waters turned to gold –
The sun was on your skin and hair,
Your eyes were laughing bold.

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 2 -- Presumption
   
Were you once a priestess,
At an ancient shrine?
Did I come to you to ask
If you would be mine?

Did I ever kiss you?
Did I hear you sigh?
Did I hold you in my arms?
Did you watch me die?

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 3 -- Longing
   
Summers come and summers go,
Autumn winds and winter snow
Yield to springtime’s gentle rain.
Will I see my love again?

Will I see you once again,
And look into your eyes?
Will I see you smile again,
And see back into time?

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 4 -- Faith
  
Yes, I shall see you yet again,
And look into your eyes.
My heart will stop, then beat again.
And I shall see you smile.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com >
Brooklyn, New York, circa 1991 
  
*************************

Notes
  
The only poetry that I can recall writing prior to "Ava"  are:  (a) the four line piece called “Holly”, which I wrote in the 1970’s; and (b) a few things that I wrote during my first summer in New York, in 1988, while recovering from my first year of teaching in the public schools. These last appear to be lost, and I cannot remember them fully.

One evening,  in or around 1991, after returning home from work, the whole of what I have now called Ava 1, above, and parts of what I have now separated out, and called Ava, II - IV, came to me, quite out of the blue.  I wrote it down,  quickly and effortlessly --  in one sitting, almost as if taking dictation.  Later that evening  (or it could have been the next day), I added small pieces to the end of “Ava”.  This I did more deliberately.

It is now 2006 – about fifteen years later.  I no longer have any records at hand of the Ava poem.  But its first few quatrains have run through my head periodically.

Years after writing it, I remember e-mailing “Ava” to my sister, Monua, after she had moved from New York to California. I did this in response to a wonderful poem that she had composed and e-mailed to us.   Unfortunately, both Monua's computer and mine went through crashes subsequently.  After Monua's passing in January of 2004, I inherited her last laptop, and began using it about a year later.  But there is no trace left in it of either poem. 

Remarkably, as I sat down at Monua’s laptop, today, to type out the poem that I had written fifteen years ago, it all seemed to come back – even the pieces I had added subsequent to the initial “revelation”.  

I decided to separate these added pieces, plus the end-part of what I wrote at first sitting, into three other parts that follow the first;  and  have done this above.   I have tried to tie what are now the first three parts of the Ava poem together, by repeating the first stanza of  Ava 1 at the end of each of Avas 2 - 3.   I do not know, however, if this artifice does more harm than good.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com > Brooklyn, New York, 2006 March 4.