In the echoing silence and the halo of unborn light,
As I walk along the roaring sinewy brook not far from my home,
I meditate on what I have done, what I am doing, what I will do.
I look behind and see layers of time hanging from
some universal reference point,
Mournful yet tough,
The hour of my ultimate reckoning could not be pushed away any more.
My life lost its intentions and pattern with band saws of time and world
And what survives is a jigsaw puzzle.
In my childhood I dreamt of a peaceful world with a chance to make it beautiful
But as I grew up I realized that the world itself was a big block to the dream,
God made man but man made the world.
As a boy growing up in Malikyar I dreamt of amity and love
Coalescing my relatives and friends,
But the sharp blades of culture fought them fiercely,
Later I saw that this malaise was universal.
As I grew up I dreamt of death of religious bigotry
But later realized it was used as an armor by people,
So it could not be erased,
When I grew up I saw that money was the greatest god man had.
In my school I focused on understanding my subjects
Rather than on their practical merits,
But my teachers looked down on my approach.
I looked into science and found immense relief in its truthfulness,
I thought it should become our God for all practical purposes
But found it used as a vehicle to satisfy man’s materialistic lust,
And The Age of Technology became the age of unhappiness:
Loneliness, purposelessness, materialistic greed.
Much time I spent looking for the beautiful in life,
The elements that could pick life from its perennial morass
And take it to an elevation of blissful serenity and creative passion,
Universal experience and selfless expansion.
Life as it comes is a blank slate on which no designs have been made
But the pervasiveness of the existing culture does not allow anything new on it:
Possibilities are smothered by tradition and convenience.
Potential of life is staggering, its experience elevating,
But the architecture of world asphyxiates it,
People in power are blind and inspired ones too few.
I immersed deeply over a long haul of time in philosophy
To mitigate the searing anguish of life,
But the illumination of idealism and renunciation that I found
Was unacceptable to most,
I wanted that there be a brotherhood among humans
But individualism trumped the idea.
I wrote several books on philosophical and literary subjects,
People were either puzzled by them or did not like them,
I wanted my poems and writings to inspire love, truthfulness, and beauty,
But, alas, the worldly wisdom did not trust them.
There is more beauty in the unknown than in the known,
There is more tranquility in nature than there is in Wall Street,
Man is an exquisite element of nature than a psychologist’s concept,
His life is to explore, love, and create.
Experience of life forced me to be just its observer
and not its mover and shaker.
People ask me what I have done.
Note: Malikyar is a locality in Srinagar, Kashmir, India.
Suffern, New York, July 16, 2014; Rev.: 7.30.2015
www.kaulscorner.com
maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com
Suffern, New York, July 16, 2014
www.kaulscorner.com
maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com
