December

IT’S late December

And another year has gone by

This decadence -

A fall, these accouterments of melancholy

Bohemian dreams of

Pristine waters

 

Iridescent skies shined for months, then bent -  

bent until they pushed us down

Into deep winter

Snow and ice and slush

Such despair – a gloom

 

Then it roared howling through cold nights

Neglected all this while, marooned in some corner

Along the wildly swaying pines

 

And people,

They had colored the night

Festooned it even

Perhaps they had seen something I hadn’t.

--

Anant Dhavale
Coyright@ Anant Dhavale

A song

A song

---

THE Maples are turning yellow

Won’t you come?

It was raining as I crossed the street

Dreaming about you

Thinking about you

THE Pines are standing still

Won’t you sing?

A stone age crossed me as I walked

Thinking about you

Dreaming about you

The world is turning grey

Won’t you smile?

I am chasing but a mirage

Thinking about you

Dreaming about you…

The Maples are turning yellow, won’t you come?

-Anant Dhavale

Copyright @ Anant Dhavale

( Dublin OH)

Crimson

What makes
Tonight's tropical wind so cold
I wonder how the trees will survive


Come and kill me, engulf me
In your wild currents
In you, I have heard, everything melts


You, the one who remains on my dreams
Your beauty; like the dew atop a rose
Your kisses, wet and full with a thousand dreams

This land of masons, of men and women
So simple and true; amongst them
I am but a lost cause


Love has sown its seeds; water and fire
Smiles adorning mouths, full of hope
Bodies, fresh with the drizzles of spring


Crimson, green and pale
What a vivid tale; a kind of a rare solstice
That hides everything, leaving a few colours behind

**
Anant Dhavale
Copyright © Anant Dhavale

The Sarab

There it goes
God knows who or what created it
It flashes and swirls and twirls

This season, the days are bright
Hot with crystal clear blue skies
Is it only me that feels a bit irrational

Your wines, I have cherished them
For such a long time ;
The mist and the haze of my lifetime, dissolved in it

Her loneliness and anger; there it went
In a flash - like a lightening
See it burnt the earth and the seventh sky

The evenings, they make this sky
So red, as if some one has been killed
Is it my own blood?

--

Anant Dhavale
Copyright © Anant Dhavale

Of Spring and Hope

(Wote this poem many years ago, and I have kept editing it since. )

Wheelchair tucked into the table

she can hardly breathe, and yet
he tries to feed her smaller morsels

God knows how many jobs
she had worked
to feed him

Her head wobbles every so often
and the tissues keep falling off

He slowly tucks them back

She can hardly eat

all she wants is to spend some time
with her boy
before it all comes
crumbling down

He holds a glass of water.
she sips a drop or two
and shakes her head
the effort
takes a toll on her weary life

The day is dying bit by bit and
the sky is probably crimson red outside

Spring is slowly making its way,
they say it brings hope and life for the 
new and the old

Days dissolve into dusk
nights roll into dawns;
the coherence
simple and easy, caring
like doting mothers
and loving sons

The tissues keep falling off, 
and God knows why but
I got tears in my eyes

 
--
Anant Dhavale
Copyright © Anant Dhavale

A poem

Lazy saturday evening in an English pub
Reckless and young
She looks beautiful
In a denim jacket
A girl one can fall for
You go to the uni or something?
I ask her
I have a baby, she replies a smile
Give the lady whatever she wants 
I say to the barkeep

--
Anant Dhavale
@Anant Dhavale

Commotion

Commotion

---

Foretell
What the night holds
Long waits, shimmers of joy
Besieging journeys or
Death

I better part of me always knew it
And probably you did too
A thing understood
Never told, never heard

They say
The worlds sprouted from a word
The word itself
Doesn't matter
Nevertheless

Un-catalogued,
We’ve lived umpteen lives
Each ending in dregs
Scattered far and few

Commotion, chaos
is it you?
Or have I finally stepped out of my solitude?

--

Anant Dhavale

Copyright @ Anant Dhavale

Un poème triste

Un poème triste

---
There's so much of noise here
Take me out, will you?
I cant think in here
Cant breathe

And so we leave for a walk
There is a man muttering something
Around the corner
I often see him there
May be he speaks with god

Hold my arm, would you?
Walk me through the isles
And so we walk
Its an awfully quite evening

There's a bunch of kids playing in the distance - Few old people talking in muffled voices, You cant really listen to what they are saying; Silhouettes of trees against the fading sky, slowly moving to a gloomy wind

Its a dead little town
Lets get out of here
The old buildings seem to have gotten very old
In the evening glow
Its crumbling;
Melting drop by drop to a slow, agonizing death
But, you see, you cannot really go afar
Things always pull you back
Friends
Lovers
Even old streets and boulevards

And so the evening grows on us
Awfully quietly;
Let us go home
Its getting cold
The children in the distance
The old men in the park
Must have reached home by now;
You see,  not a lot of people like to walk alone
On such melancholy evenings
Muttering all alone
As if they were talking to the god
--
Anant Dhavale
Copyright @ Anant Dhavale 2015

On understanding and other such myths

On understanding and other such myths'

1.

There is a void

I try to fill

it's impenetrable

I toil nonetheless

 

I attach it to people and things

equally in-vain

 

it is my Nessun dorma

a sleepless lament

 

logic has failed me 

and religions have mislead me

mostly

 

I look at the old people

they look so calm

beyond the fading lines

Maybe they weren't what they are now.

 2.

There's fire and moon

from where it all began

to create the un-made

to annihilate the created

create

a voice said

and it all came to being

 

Reminiscences

linger

mountains, rivers, oceans

people

 

3.

 Mithyaa

you see all of this,

you, me, this world

is a magnificent lie

said the poet

before he was pelted with stones

Smallest amongst the atoms*

Expansive than the sky;

some said he disappeared

some said he was dragged from a bridge

before being killed

 

Gods, they said, came down and took him along

unto the heavens

we believed them.

  4.

 The layer thickens

the songs we sing

the love we make

the sadness we feel

The pain that’s throbbing in my knee right now

 

All beyond a broken veil, the discernment

a mere illusion

brilliantly

ornate

 ***

Anant Dhavale

Copyright@ Anant Dhavale

 

--

* These two lines are a loose translation of a poem by Tukaram, a sixteenth-century Marathi poet.

A mid noon visit to the Westminster Cathedral

It was an overcast noon

At the Westminster

as the

Children in the choir sang

A long, lonely hymn

That made me cry

A thousand rivers

 

I lit up a candle

And sat there in a complete melancholy

That'd gripped me

In the mountains of western ghats

And

On the banks of Godavari 

Lost

forlorn

And somber

 

Now

I am not a Christian 

Nor am I a Hindu

But I prayed

To what’s beyond the curtain

 

And if someone had asked me

'What were they singing?'

Only the angels know

I would have said. 

--

Anant Dhavale

Copyright @ Anant Dhavale

A million years

A million years

On whose shoulders perches the Eagle?
Who mourns through gusts of the eastern rushing winds?
A boy who grew up in dullness couldn't get out of it for the rest of his life
he felt gloomy on all evenings and smiled at the slightest of the raindrops
he saw the decades descend on the great delta and thought he would have a rising too;
the one that would pull him out of the clutches of nights and days
Grief is borne out of grief, he would think, and nothing else happens

So it was the rising that never came, and grief only paved the way for further grief
The valley surged with new delights
newer brigades took over the streets and the palaces
he scribbled, and he kept scribbling
to the rise of the valley and the tedium of his own
Everything will pass, he wrote; nothing will remain,
the tree that gave you the shelter
the you that took the shelter
the shelter that gave 
and the act of taking
There isn't a conundrum bigger than a symbol staring at you meaninglessly
No sadness is greater than what dwells in your heart
you are the life
In you lies the end

He walked along the shores with a peasant's feet
with a smell of the soil in his soul harvested by generations
toiling and dying in the fields
his hands carried the language of harvests
through his eyes flew the monsoons
the dreary summers
and the long hopeless waits
scattered along the earthen roofs
along the weary shadows of Neem

We were no warriors
our king taught us to fight
and so we fight
with our enemies
with our lives and our times
we plow through the fields and raise harvests of gold

He walked by the cities that rose to the skies
with a demeanor that mocked him
ridiculed him
and even threatened him
these glittering settlements of hollow people; with billows of wealth rising from its trenches
It's blue, sky-high sepulchers
shone deep into the pupils of his eyes
blinding him
pushing him back
mauling him, crushing him to death

This isn't the place for me; he thought  I belong to
the fields and the hills
and the river that flows through my heart
I walk down the road that passes through the planes
and the faraway lands
where truth lays scattered in feathers
of slain birds; of drained seas
 I walk into the cold
in to the dark grey blossoms;
the sounds sublime

 Who am I, my beloved? He asked
 to the skies, to the waters, to the winds
 Where am I headed?
 Decades have gone by, and he hasn't reached anywhere
 and the Godavari, she has flown past another million years.

--

Anant Dhavale

Copyright@ Anant Dhavale
Anantdhavale@gmail.com

First Published in the Open Road Review.

Vague

Its mostly vague
and beyond comprehension
I remember some dark footpath
In a sort of a garden
some flowers, mostly white
Lilies, Jasmine or something like that
and a few nooks and corners
dark and pale
And  that is all I have at this moment
You'll  see that's not much of a memory
nor does it lead anywhere
but then
how many things do?

Anant Dhavale‎
Copyright@ Anant Dhavale

On Abandonments

On Abandonments
--
Bravo
You have lasted till now
Surprised yourself
As a heap of things lies undone
Undeterred
Till your penciled horizons
Dark and blue

People on the streets
Around the nooks and corners of your life
The billows that rise
From your unfathomable solitude
Your imagination has kept wandering like
City dogs
Trying to save itself
From the streets
You never belonged to
You've held your ground

This picture
An endless desolation
A prolonged night
But you see,
Death was never the answer -
And by far the longest of your
Journeys
Have been to self -
Tumultuous and
In vain
Leaving the marks of your abandonments
All over
Fences of small homes
Looking out in the open
Dirt roads
Railway tracks
Here and afar
There it lies
The most precious of your thoughts
Of leaving
Undone

Leaving never had no bounds, it is endless
And complete
And easy
As the morning breeze
Lowering its weeds on lakes
Intoxicating
Pure waters
Annihilating the most ancient.
Winds and mountains, you see
Are older than you
And your history
And beliefs of the most talented of your creed
A wave that rose and killed
Worshippers and non
Took'em all in a fold
As the procession marched on

***
Anant Dhavale
Copyright@ Anant Dhavale

Alchemy

Alchemy
--
I am an Alchemist
Albeit,
Losing the craft
Day by day
As the world waits outside
Eagerly
For some kind of alchemy
They've never seen
Or heard about

And things
They keep happening
In front of my eyes
Blasting like atoms
As I try to find
Some kind of relevance
In vain

See this life
It is magnanimous
In that, it is
As old as the grief
It has no bounds
Or a lineage
It can boast about

Water
Ancient and deep
Spread across
The end of realms
Why does it sing praises
Of a drop
Becoming an ocean

And whose sadness
Is this
That you've lived so far
Days in and days out
Like
Steady rains
That wont
Cease
Ever

----

Anant Dhavale
Copyright@ Anant Dhavale

Reign, the

Reign, the
--
Each one has a kingdom
Of their own
Burning with desires and wills
Even with grief
Guilt or shame
Could be anything under the sun
( I have seen people collecting stamps and butterflies too)

As the early hour morning breeze blows
Cold and dry
A flame flickers in my mind;
I have a kingdom too,
You see
Not of a regret
Or remorse
But of voices
Red, Indigo and purple, wry
That I keep listening to and respond
May be you are one of them

--
Anant Dhavale
Copyright@ Anant Dhavale