The Second Coming

Turning and turning the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand...

-W.B.Yeats

Endymion

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will

keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health,

and quiet breathing.

John Keats

Childe Harold

There is a pleasure in the pathless

woods,

There is rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and the music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature

more,

From these our interviews, in which

I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What i cannot express, yet cannot

conceal

-Lord Byron

Asleep

Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.

Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking
Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars,
High-pillowed on calm pillows of God's making,
Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead,
And these winds' scimitars,
-Or whether yet his thin and sodden head
Confuses more and more with the low mould,
His hair being one with the grey grass
Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty-old,
Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!
He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold,
Than we who wake, and waking say Alas!

Rathiy

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Rathiy

Mobile

Those who walk within confines are men,
those who walk beyond are saints.

No confines for me, no confines
a closed fist is my boundary wall

I can go wherever I want
but in this man’s pocket

I can connect to anyone anywhere
but always under his thumb.

Even when he’s dead asleep
he’ll tuck me under his pillow
listening to the tick-tock-tick of his wristwatch.
The whole night through
quietly I’ll keep all his messages
coming from all over the world.

Those silent messages will glow
in my dark spaces
They’ll glow like the cats-eyes
of my  dream-memories:
   Mother’s ailments
   filed court cases
   all the office scuffles
   all the rush of unfinished kisses
   all the muffled calls
the faint quivers of many a held-in sob all flicker within me.
In me flutter the wounded wings of messenger-pigeons 
each feather yanked out  and flicked off one by one
once in a while, even a pat on the wing.
No matter how modern the world may be
the expression of love and hate are primordial.

I’m like the roads of old Baghdad
before the American bombings
Parallel to the modern malls
are the old souks and the meena  bazaar
glittering inside me
like archeological ruins dotting the heart of the metropolis.

 

Rathiy

Cinderella

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock

Rathiy

The Grammar Lesso

A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
of and with are prepositions. The's
an article, a can's a noun,
a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
A can can roll - or not. What isn't was
or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
is present tense. While words like our and us
are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.
Is is a helping verb. It helps because
filled isn't a full verb. Can's what our owns
in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."
See? There's almost nothing to it. Just
memorize these rules...or write them down!
A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.

Rathiy

Christian Cemetery

These tombstones have been uprooted
Chipped madonnas and broken crosses
all weathered grey, are strewn on grass.
Never thought I would see them thus.
These stones that have been here so long
it seems the land was theirs for good-
but for the Urban Renewal Department
which needed that plot for a park.

My granny, though Catholic, was cremated
according to her wish. She knew
room in our affections was all
the space she needed. Or perhaps
she'd heard all about urbanization,
how her stone, had she been buried,
would wear away or be dislodged.
And so when she had to give up
what space she occupied, she left us
something that cannot be lost in stone
and therefore has no renewal.

Rathiy