Echoes

 
Echoes 
   
  

Chaos

     
When I get up in the morning,
And I totter from my bed,
I remember then my father,
Who’s been only three years dead.

And then looking in the mirror,
Since I’ve shaved away my beard,
I can see my father’s visage
And no longer think that’s weird.

The grunt I make on rising,
The downturn of my mouth,
Remind me that I’m aging,
For my parts are going south.

And I see and hear my father
And my uncles, grandpas, more—
That lineage, male, of elders
Who walked this way before.

So I go about my business,
But suddenly I laugh,
Remembering a gem-like grain
My father picked from chaff.
 
He had an eye and ear for it.
I hear, as I grow old,
His mild remarks that made one smile,
The stories that he told...

******
   
But when I see a stranger
And I see that stranger smile,
I know my mother’s in me
And will remain a while.

For that was how they greeted
My mother, who had eyes
That looked on them with kindness,
As each would then surmise.

And so it is with puppies
And even dogs when grown—
Except it’s me who’s smiling,
As if they were my own.

She had a way with animals,
As she also had with us.
Her instincts, of the kinder sort,
She acted on—sans fuss.

So though she was a mortal
And so had faults like all,
It seemed she was an angel,
Who’d chanced, by us, to fall.

And so my aunts and grandmas,
And that widow, with a will,
Who mothered so my sister,
Are each within me still.

******
 
I see my sister walking
Within a region hallowed.
She went her way before me.
I often wish I’d followed.

I call to her, “I’m coming.”
She doesn’t seem to hear.
I stand and watch my sister—
So distant, yet so near.

In everything she tried to do,
It seemed that she was gifted.
And yet, with so much left to do,
Her soul, from Earth, was lifted.

I read the pages of the book
She’d written with such grace.
And as I read, she lives again,
And I can read her face.

******
 
I also see the others—
From the villages and towns—
To whom I sat and listened—
The sages and the clowns…

My cousins, older, younger,
The friends I made at school,
And those who once were neighbors—
Are still within this fool.

For a fool is what I’ve turned to,
Upon my downward arc.
And so, to all that brightness,
I turn to, in the dark.

Our childhoods might be wretched,
But even those have light.
The hurts are healed and hidden,
The blessings stay in sight.

******
 
We circle, in our journeys
From birth to death, so when
We near our mortal endings,
We’re back where we began.

And where was my beginning,
Except where I was born?
So there I'll be returning
To mend the fabric torn.

I will see again the rivers
And the fields of gold and green,
So even in my misery
A breeze will blow, serene.

Village River, by Samiran Sarkar, 2011
http://www.absolutearts.com/art-for-sale/themes/all/landscape/river-5.html

 
I will hear the city’s bustle;
I will see the city’s skies.
I will squint up at the cloudscape;
I will watch the kite that flies.

I will hear the tongues my kinsfolk spoke.
I will hear the dialects’ speech.
I will savor, as I’m dying,
The flavor that’s in each.

The languages of childhood,
Of the land that gave me birth,
Their timbres and their cadences,
I’ll hear, when leaving Earth.

******

The aged are often treated
With disrespect and worse.
The scoldings are repeated,
With orders sharp and terse.

There are echoes from our childhoods
That we hear through all our lives.
And among these there are voices
That can help us bear the jibes.

There are voices past of wisdom,
There are voices that are sweet.
There are voices that are sterner
That can help us bear defeat.
   

Chaos and Perception

I’ve traveled, in my journeys,
Across the theaters grand.
I’ve met the proud and humble
And grasped the offered hand.

But when I’m near my ending
And racked by grief and pain,
The proud will be forgotten;
The humble might remain.

But surely those, that childhood
Had seen with a widened eye,
And those, to whom I bonded,
Will haunt me, as I die.

So when my hearing’s faded,
I will hear those echoes weak—
I will hear my parents talking,
I will hear my sister speak.

     
2015 September 12th, Sat., 10:20 pm
Skyway Restaurant, Bath Avenue
(some stanzas added Sept. 14th, Sun.)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York

  

The Murmuration

 
The Murmuration

I saw the starlings in the sky.
They wheeled and arced and seemed to weave
a giant form of sentience.

I stood transfixed and watched with awe
the flowing shapes that being took
that twisted, turned, dispersed, condensed…

And as I watched, I heard the sound,
the murmur of the beating wings—
a hundred thousand pairs of wings.

I heard it rise from a whisper, surge
and fade and rise and ebb again—
like waves within an aerial sea.

And all at once the cloud grew dark
and swiftly plunged across the trees,
as one by one they settled down...

A giant bird is created out of a starling murmuration in Scotland.
http://www.grindtv.com/random/starling-murmurations-create-fantastic-show-in-scottish-sky/

   
I wondered whether starlings had
their schools, in which they taught their young,
and whether tuition there was free.

And did the students there have tests
and were the teachers graded too?
Did Danielson hit starlings too?

I shook my head.  I’d seen and heard
the murmuration on a screen,
as schools were just about to start.

I thank you, Diane Ravitch and
the one who sent this, Susan Schwartz,
and Dylan Winter for the clip.

But most of all, I thank the birds,
who fly across the heavens, free,
as  humans were—and still could be.

2015 September 6th, Sun, 12:26 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York  
   

• http://dianeravitch.net/2015/09/06/this-beautiful-video-will-make-your-day/ (This leads to the video in the next link in this list.)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88UVJpQGi88  Dylan Winter and the Starling Murmurations
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE   Starlings on Otmoor
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmO4Ellgmd0  Unbelievable Starlings
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V6qUUWa4zk  Starlings in Rome (This attempts to describe how the starlings manage their coordinated performance and how they evade predatory birds.)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFFJ8hTC_Q   Starlings Coming To Roost - Starling Murmuration in Cornwall England (This shows starlings roosting, in close-up.)

Sin

Sin

Lead us not into temptation
And deliver us from evil.
Amen.

We blame a class, a race or other group—
There are professions that are often blamed.
But it’s the nature of the human beast
That’s still the culprit for the mischief done.

For every virtue, every angel-trait,
We’ll find a vice, a sort of devil’s taint,
That mars the soul within a human or
Perhaps within all beings sentient.
 
If we had only virtues, then perhaps
We might be far too boring.  Light and shade
And vice and virtue, good and evil are,
Like yin and yang, in constant interplay.

So some might say that vice gives virtue place,
As hunger gives to plainest food its taste.
Without the sins that sinners multiply,
Could even saints be duly recognized?
 
And what, to me, is virtue could be seen
As vice to one whose values are reversed.
And yet, there still are basics that appear
To be the common ground on which we stand.

So save for prophetesses such as Ayn,
You’ll rarely find that people disagree
That selfish actions lead to evil ends,
While love and caring make for brighter lives.

For this, we might invoke a spirit that
Is root and essence of what’s seen as good,
And all that’s evil might be then ascribed
To visions clouded—or to a spirit dread.

But others might look back at what we were
When we were closer in our lives to apes
But rose and flourished from that sharing which
We still perceive as good—which touches hearts.

So "good", to them, is that which served us well
In eons past, when mind and body formed
To suit the circumstances then—for though
The times have changed, we still remain the same.

I will not enter into these debates.
I’ll only say that instincts old and deep
Respond to kindness—and that meanness brings
Yet other, meaner instincts into play.

To strive to be as supermen is fraught
With danger. We are always what we are.
We should be cognizant of what’s within
And seek a balance that sustains us all.

For when that balance is disturbed, we see
The sorrow that is not of earth or air
Or water, but is made by acts of men
And leads to yet more sorrows, turn on turn.

The earthquakes and the storms and floods may leave,
But fires rage and droughts and famines come.
Yet all of these, by men and all, are borne
With lesser pain than monstrous deeds of Man.

A fire may burn a forest down and yet
It leaves a part of it—and then with time
That forest lives again. What Man has touched
With devil's hands, no heaven can restore.

Be watchful then. Remove yourself from that
Which leads to conflicts with your inner god,
Who then is either silenced, leaving sin
To flourish, or cries out in pain within.

The ones, who cannot silence conscience, live
With ceaseless war within themselves, unless
They speak and act to change what often is
Impossible when others shrug and sin.
 
It wasn’t Adam or his partner, Eve,
Or a serpent leading both of them astray.
It’s we, who look to God to salve our sins,
Forgetting god and devil are within.

We lose our way and cannot find the path.
We lose our reason and we close our hearts.
It later seems that we were not awake
And so committed acts we shouldn't have.

The heart expands with kindness and with love,
Which spread like blessings when they’re acted on.
The heart contracts with meanness and with hate
And all our words and deeds of violence.

It’s difficult, within the fire, to be
As cool of temper as we’d like to be.
It’s hard, when we are stressed and desperate,
To be as kind and patient as we should.

So what are we to do?  Perhaps it’s best
To move away from all that meanness breeds—
To distance selves from where it’s fear and greed
That drive the engines of economies.

Although that’s easier said than done, to see
The source of evil, of disturbance, is
To step away from it, towards that calm
That gives us time and space to see and love.

We come like water and like wind we go.
So said Khayyam, Fitzgerald’s paraphrase
Purports.  If we should pray, perhaps we need
To ask for courage and for innocence.

So let us then release the things, to which
We hold, that rob us of our clarity.
That freedom might be difficult to reach,
Until we see we’re sullied by our vice.

There’s anger, greed and hate and jealousy.
And each of these, and even pride, has place
Within the workings of the mind that lives,
But each of these can lead us into sin.

For sin is not the thought that comes and goes
Or even stays awhile.  For thoughts may rise
And feelings too.  It’s when they’re nurtured and
They’re acted on that sin is birthed and born.

So let us heed what Buddhas past have said
To free ourselves of what some others call
The burden that we carry of our sins.
Let’s set it down and go upon our way.

We recognize a thought, a feeling and
We see, perhaps, its provenance as well.
We watch its rise and then we watch its ebb.
We do not ask that it should go or dwell.

We do not fear the feeling that we have,
And even fear, we know, has time and place.
We come like water, and we go like wind.
Forgive us, for we know that we have sinned.

And knowing this, we then might lose, perhaps,
Our hubris and might also find the strength
To heal from wounds that others might inflict,
Forgiving them, in our humility.

Lead us not into temptation
And deliver us from evil.
Amen.

2015 September 3rd, Thu., 2:30 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
  

Morning’s Song

Morning’s Song  (Draft)

Note: To view the pictures as in a gallery, in a somewhat bigger and clearer format, please single-click on any image.  This should lead to a gallery-view screen, in which you can click on the thumbnails at the bottom to move through the images.  To return to this post, click on the white X in the black background to the gallery.  Thanks. -- Arjun
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Dawn touches Bratley View, in the New Forest, England
by Martin Dixon, 2012
http://www.photoforbeginners.com/image/20280/dawn_touches_bratley_view  

The days and nights are contrasts, like a zebra's coat of stripes,
Yet dawn and dusk have softness; they dance in pastel shades.
Their songs are more like whispers that rise and fade away,
For these are our transitions, the pauses in the plays.

The hues of dawn grow lighter, the ones of dusk grow deep.
The mists of dawn are nestled, the clouds of sunset flame.
The psalms of sunrise waken, the hymns of dusk sedate.
The morn is children’s laughter, the evening is our sighs.

******

I have woken and have listened to the singing of the dawn.
I have heard the song of morning; I have heard the chants that rose.
I have heard the waking whispers, I have listened to the tones.
I have heard the bells of morning as they pealed the start of day.

I’ve had mornings that were peaceful, that were tranquil, lit by grace,
I’ve had mornings that were hopeful, when it seemed that all was well.
I have walked then in the open, when the stars were still in sight.
I have seen the eastern dawning, as the night was fleeing west.

Morning Glory
Smoky Mountains, Haywood County, North Carolina
http://favim.com/image/49184/

I have felt the mists of morning; I have seen them touched by sun.
I have watched those mists arising as the dawn became the day.
I have heard the birds of morning as they tweeted, chirped and sang.
I have seen the fields and flowers as they woke to greet the sun.

I’ve been blessed by early morning, when I rose before the dawn.
I have breathed the scents of morning; I have shivered from its chill.
I have touched the wet on leaflets; I have tasted of the dew.
I have seen the waving treetops, as the morning came in view.

Daffodils, Skagit Valley, Washington  

   http://alanmajchrowicz.com/skagit-valley-washington-daffodil-fields/

But we’ve been robbed of morning and we’ve been robbed of dusk.
At dawn, you’ll see us rushing to get to work in time.
At evening, we’re returning, with worries still in mind.
We’ve rarely time for smiling—or even for a sigh.

And some must work the night-shifts and never see the sun.
The stars are now forgotten, the moonlight does not fall
On little children sleeping.  The nightingale and lark
Are only met in readings.  What still is left of soul?

******

How many years, how many years, have passed without the dawn?
How many years of misery, without that bit of grace?
How many hopes and dreams arose, as did that rising sun;
How few are those that still are left, as daylight cedes to dark…

I’ll rise again, before I leave, to see that precious morn—
That morning time that brings us hope and gives us strength again.
I’ll wake again, before the dawn, and venture out of doors,
To be once more, before I go, at one with morning’s song.

Kangchendzongha, from Kolakham
by Anirban Ganguly
looking northeast through Sikkim, from near the Bhutan border
Neora Valley National Park, West Bengal, India

2015 September 1st, Tue., 4:55 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
-----------------------------------------------------
  
Recent related poems: 
  

• Dawn and Dusk—II  
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2015/08/dawn-and-duskii.html )
• Dusk  
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2015/08/dusk.html )
• Dawn and Dusk   
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2015/08/dawn-and-dusk.html )
• Morning Glory  
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2015/06/morning-glory.html )
• Sing to Me  
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2014/11/sing-to-me.html ) 

  
and two from eleven years ago:

• Morning Song  
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2006/04/morning-song.html ) 
• Evening Dirge
  ( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2006/04/evening-dirge.html )

    

Slowing Can’t Be Right

 
Slowing Can’t Be Right 

How much of all our suffering is due
To speeding when we should be going slow?
We work and eat and couple now at speed
And rarely notice all the harm we do.

So some can thrive, with sense and conscience stilled,
While others suffer from their actions or
Perceive the things that go unheeded while
We're busy rushing through our hectic lives.

******
 
We live our lives of loneliness and fear
And seek our consolations where we can.
The sun may rise, the little birds may sing
And yet we sleep or go to work in dread.

We live in isolation, torn apart
By all the tempests blowing through our lives:
The storms of Nature and the works of Man—
What others do and what we do ourselves.

We’ve lost the arts of tolerance and fun.
We turn away from relatives and friends
And seek our entertainment and our worth
In things and places distant from our earths.

We learn to race, forgetting how to slow.
We spend our lives acquiring knowledge, things—
While losing wisdom and that freedom true
Of living like the ones still human do.

You’ll find them in the forests and the hills,
In regions far removed, on arctic ice
And in the places of the scorching sun,
Beleaguered now as they are pushed to die.

They do as belly and as conscience bids.
They live and die in goodly company.
They have no money. Their possessions, they
Can carry on their backs as lightest weight.

They pay no rent to landlords or to banks.
They answer to no bosses, being free.
There is, among them, neither “high” nor “low”.
They’re born, they smile and weep, and then they go.

And some might say that I romanticize
The lives of those that dwell in poverty.
But I reply, “What wealth could ever buy
The gems of love and of sincerity?”

And others still might say, “We disagree.
We would not trade our lives for such as these.
Besides, there isn’t room, upon this Earth,
To live as once we did, in misery.”

So each may view the grass that’s distant as
Of greener hue or less than that beneath.
And we might say, “The world is changing, so
We cannot now remain as once we were.”
 
But should we then surrender to the flow
That takes us where some others want us to?
Or should we say, “We still are beings free,
Who choose our lives to be as they could be?”

******

The one that halts, when all around stampede,
Might well be trampled on—and even die.
But when the wiser start to slow and turn,
We slowly could return to clarity.

The question is, “Will sanity prevail
Before our madness breeds catastrophe?
And some might say, “We’re told that’s happened, yet
We do not slow, for slowing can’t be right.”

2015 August 30th, Sun., 3:28 pm
(first two stanzas added Sep. 2nd, Wed.)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
   

Song of the Beings

Note: To view the pictures as in a gallery, in a somewhat bigger and clearer format, please single-click on any image.  You can click on the thumbnails at the bottom to move through the gallery.  To return to this post, click on the white X in the black background to the gallery.  Thanks. -- Arjun
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This is a nonsense song (with perhaps some sense in it) that started from a phrase used by É.P., an Irish-American, in a "conversation" that  he had with me (A.J., an Indian-American) as we were both commenting on a Facebook post.

Part of that conversation is reproduced directly below, followed by the song.
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É.P.: In a previous life, I was a journalist and editor. I also spent 15 years in education. Triple undergrad--English, Journalism, Speech. You're singing the song of my people. ;-)

A.J.: A phrase in your comment seemed to have struck a chord in the strings in my head (!).  Those strings started humming and this is what they said. (See "Song of the Beings" down below.)  It is a lot of nonsense and a bit of sense, mixed together in a stew of a song.

Peace,

--Arjun
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Song of the Beings 

“You’re singing the song of my people.” you said.
I wish that it really were true.
I have heard of the songs of the peoples and yet
The songs that I know are so few.

There are songs of the nations, there are songs of the trades,
There are songs of the forests and seas.
There are songs that we’ve learned from the singing of birds,
There are songs that we sing on our knees.

But in truth they’re the same. It’s the spirit that sings
Through the whales and the crickets and men.
So perhaps it is true that I’m singing the song
Of the trade that you cherish and ken.

Let us sing then of words—of their sense and their freight,
Of their music and rhythm and rhyme.
Let us sing then of birds and of dawn and of dusk,
And the flowing, that’s ceaseless, of time.

Jiminy Cricket
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Jiminy_Cricke

Let us sing then of Ireland and Egypt and then
Let us sing of the land that we’re in—
Of its past and its present and future and all
Of its beauty and glory and sin.

Let us sing then the dirges for those that have died,
Let us sing too the paeans of hope.
Let us sing with emotion and yet let us pray
That there’s reason that’s left in the dope.

Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado, 1864
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtGcvs8F11A

Let the little ones dance to the strains of our song.
Let us ask, of the plant and the beast,
That they join in our song, that we all sing along,
For our song, of all songs, is the least.

It’s the least of the songs, it can hardly be heard,
It’s a whisper that seems to have died.
Yet hark—it arises, and softly we hear
It whisper, “Your bosses have lied.”

Donald Trump, real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate
U.S.A., 2015
http://www.politico.com/story/2011/03/panama-to-trump-youre-fired-051175

It’s the songs of the beings, by “leaders” misled,
By “lords” and by “owners” enslaved.
It’s the song that the horses and asses and pigs
And cattle and humans have craved.
 

a policeman arresting a fugitive
Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A., 2013
http://deadspin.com/giant-ass-runaway-pig-is-a-thing-to-behold-472662301

It’s the song that delights, it’s the song that desponds,
It’s the song of the present and past.
It’s the song we’ve been trying to sing, but we couldn’t,
That we all are now singing at last.

It’s the song of the chickens, the ducks and the bees,
It’s the song of the goats and the sheep.
It’s the song of the peasants and workers and see—
It is light, it is dark, it is deep.

Modern Slavery, 2013
https://www.youtube.com/user/walkfreeorg

It’s the song of the tribes that have vanished and those
That are seeing the end of their hope.
It’s the song of the dad who has taken to drink,
And the mom at the end of her rope.

It’s the song of the one who is hoping to die,
It’s the song of the struggle to live.
It’s the song of the wounded, in body or heart
Or in both, who has tried to forgive.

Alcoholism
http://zdorovyj-obraz.moy.su/publ/alkogolizm/3

It’s the song of the millet and barley and wheat,
It’s the song of the rice and the corn.
It’s the song of the seed that is springing to life,
It’s the song of the one that’s reborn.

It’s the song of the prey that is eaten alive,
It’s the song of the predator too.
It’s the song of the knowledge that they both are the same,
That I now have been singing to you.

It’s the songs of the beings, from the starting of time.
It’s the song of the things that are dead.
It’s the song of the courage that gives us our strength,
It’s the song of the feeling of dread.

Let us sing, let us sing, for we’ve only a while,
And then we’ll be singing no more.
Let us sing, let us sing. When we’re gone, they will smile
And sing like we did in their yore.

2015 August 26th, Wed., 10:48 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York

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Weird

 
Weird

I was before I was and I will be when I am not.
And so it is with you and all who’re born to live and die.
The future, past and present are as one and so are all
The worlds that could have been or could be, here or there or not.
 
2015 August 21, Fri, 3:01 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York