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PASTURES GREEN

(A companion to The Waste Land)

Nirmaldasan

1. The Phoenix

So, you are in a hurry?
A little chat, then, will do
Over a cup of coffee –
Or perhaps you prefer tea.
Remember the times of old   5
When we were like wanton boys
Killing the birds for our sport?
That, that was not long ago,
Some ten or twelve years or so.
Now you have a job, a car  10
And, you say, a bungalow.

I shook his hand. It was cold.
The Bird of Time is on wing.
A crow’s droppings stained his shirt.
"Shit!" he said, then looked around,  15
Found a leaf and wiped it off.
He smokes a lot like his car.

The cows wander in the streets.
An old woman gathers dung
And makes round cakes out of them.  20
When dried they make good fuel.
The cost of fuel is high.
I don’t own a vehicle.
I don’t smoke a cigarette.
I will not add to the smoke  25
Though it makes little diff’rence.
Of course, I travel by bus
And commute by train as well
Though I would prefer to walk.

A mile or two would be fine  30
But office is far from home.
The streets are dirty, cluttered
Yet I will put the tickets
In the waste paper basket.
You change and you change the world.   

The clouds deceive the sower.
He bids adieu to parched land
And with hope seeks food in town.
A day will come when the town
Is emptied of all its folk.  40

Never curse a bird’s droppings;
It may not turn into gold
Yet seeds found in droppings sprout
Wherever they fall. There is
Hope in a handful of earth.   45
You change and you change the world.

2. A Game Of Dice

In the shadow of a tree
A parrot with its wings clipped
Comes out of a cuboid cage,
Picks up a card from the pack
And goes back into the cage.   5
The dropped card reveals the past,
The present and the future.
Won’t you leave a thing to chance?
So what if the stakes are high?
Duryodhana would not play  10
With Dharma a game of dice.
He will leave nothing to chance.
Shakuni will play for him.

Roll, roll the dice.
Shakuni, thou lord of Chance,  15
To thy tune Fate will dance.
Roll, roll the dice.

Roll, roll the dice.
Shakuni, thou lord of Fate,
At thy feet Chance will wait.  20
Roll, roll the dice.

Losers win and winners lose.
Panchali, O Panchali!
Lord Krishna comes to your aid.
Her tresses are dishevelled.  25

She will not knot them again
Till they are bathed in scarlet.
The Pandavas leave the court
To forage in deep dark woods.

Blood is thicker than water.  30
Arjuna is sick at heart;
His hair bristles with horror.
He can fight foes but not friends.
And Lord Krishna goads him on
With the gospel of action,  35
Right action and right knowledge.

Laws are broke and laws are made
In the gory battlefield.
Winners win and losers lose.
Water flows not thick as blood.  40
O Panchali! Tomorrow
To fresh woods and pastures new.

3. Tao

Clad in a piece of coarse cloth
He works with the spinning wheel.
The hum of the spinning wheel
Is sweet music to his ears.
Flow on, sweet Sabarmati,   5
Till my verse is neatly spun.

The weak overcome the strong.
The foe is half unconquered
If he is overcome by force.
The meek old man with the stick  10
Knows how to conquer with love.
He who would be friends with God
Must make the whole world his friend
Or walk alone, walk alone.

An experiment with Truth,  15
A quest for simplicity
And a life of golden mean.
It is a blessing to live
On fruits and water and nuts.

An experiment with Truth,  20
A quest for humility.
He will yield like melting ice
And be like water seeking
Low places which most despise.
Flow on, sweet Sabarmati,  25
Till my verse is neatly spun.

An experiment with Truth,
Not yielding to the senses,
An attempt to conquer Self.
A virgin sleeps in the nude   30
Beside a naked old man.
There are no exploring hands,
No caresses, no offence.
She has not stooped to folly.
Flow on, sweet Sabarmati,  35
Till my verse is neatly spun.
The sun rises from the waves,
A rosy hue tints the east.
The pious old man broke not
His vow of celibacy, 40
And the girl is untainted –
A piece of ample virtue.
 

4. Ordeal By Fire

 Sri Rama has crossed the sea,
Sri Rama has slain the foe;
His consort is free at last,
She can run into his arms.
But Rama says he cannot  5
Take her back into his arms.--
Was she chaste these captive years?

Inviolate Sita wept.
Her trials were not ended yet.
Before the vast multitude  10
She will prove her innocence
Beyond a shadow of doubt.
She wipes a tear, shuts her eyes,
Whispers a prayer to Agni,
Leaps into the leaping flames…  15

Was she chaste? Yea, she is chaste!
The fire has burnt itself out,
Her face shines like beaten gold,
Not a single tress is singed.
Rama did not doubt his spouse,   20
He never doubted his spouse.
He looked at the multitude
And took her into his arms.

5. What The River Said

 The gentleman in fine clothes
Is tired playing Sansara,
The game which can be enjoyed
Once or twice or ten times more,
But not again for ever.  5
The bird that died in his dream
Was the songbird in his heart.
He thought he had killed the bird
In his heated passion’s flame.
He wished to die by water,  10
Sink himself into the depths
Of the shimmering river.
He almost let himself go
Like a stone into the deep
When he heard the primal sound  15
AUM echoing in his ears.
The bird within his breast sang,
Urged him to love the river
And learn much from the river.

Vasudev, the good boatman,  20
Takes him across the river;
He rows calmly with strong arms
Watching the end of the boat
Because the current is strong.
Siddhartha, the Brahmin’s son,  25
Who had somewhere lost his way,
Wished to stay by the river
And learn much from the river.
Every moment it was new
Yet it seemed to be the same.  30
And the sound of the waters,
The river’s many voices,
Maternal lamentation,
Paternal jubilation,
Voices full of smarting woe,  35
Full of sadness and longing,
Sounded AUM the mystic word.

The river knows timelessness.
The river in an instant
Is both at the source and mouth  40
And everywhere in between.
It only knows the present –
Not the shadow of the past
Nor shadow of the future.

The three invincible arts –   45
Thinking, waiting and fasting.
And Siddhartha also learnt
To be a good listener
As well as a good seer.

There is rock and much water.  50
The waves of the river go
In pursuit of many goals,
To the waterfall and sea,
To the current and ocean.
In the calm moving waters  55
He saw his own reflection
Resemble his father’s face.
What was not suffered till end
And finally concluded
Recurred in a fateful wheel.  60
We have to change a great deal
And wear all sorts of clothing.

All the goals and the voices,
The childish and the manly,
The merry and the weeping,  65
Were bound with each in a stream.
And Siddhartha could listen
To the sound of the waters
Without a word from his lips.
And he could also observe  70

Like a detached lotus leaf
The stream of events flow on.

Words and thoughts are empty things.
What counts most is deed and life.
One must learn to love the world.  75

AUM TAT SAT

NOTES TO PASTURES GREEN

THEME: The poem is intended to be a companion piece to The Waste Land (TWL) of T.S. Eliot and hence, as its title indicates, shares a complementary view of reality. The title is from the 23rd Psalm of David and it echoes the `pastures new’ of Milton’s Lycidas.

METRE: The verse is written in heptasyllabic metre founded on the principle that all syllables, long and short, stressed or unstressed, constitute equal beats. Hence every line will be found to have seven syllables. The number of stresses may vary from line to line to achieve a kind of colloquial rhythm necessary to the theme of the poem. Coleridge did quite the opposite in Christabel – varying the number of syllables but not the stresses.

1. PHOENIX

Lines 5 & 6. King Lear, Act IV, Scene I:

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.

13. Rubaiyat, Fitzgerald translation.

31. Newman’s Lead Kindly Light:

The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead thou me on.

35. What The Thunder Said, TWL:

Shall I at least set my land in order?

39. Sri Aurobindo’s Tiger And The Deer:

But a day may yet come when the tiger crouches and
leaps no more in the dangerous heart of the forest.

40. Keats’ Ode On A Grecian Urn:

What little town by river or sea shore
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

41-42. The Bird with Golden Dung, a Panchatantra tale, Arthur W. Ryder translation.

43. Burial Of The Dead, TWL:

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

45. The same:

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

2. A GAME OF DICE

Lines 1-7. Burial Of The Dead:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe
With a wicked pack of cards.

8. The same:

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

14-21. Shakuni, a poem I wrote in 1996. A rock band named Shakuni And The Birds Of Prey was performing at the Madras Christian College in 1991 when a friend `Seenu’ cried, "Shakuni, come on, roll the dice!" This phrase inspired these lines.

29. Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening:

The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

31-36. The Song Celestial, Edwin Arnold translation of the Bhagwad Gita.

41-42. Milton’s Lycidas.

3. TAO

Line 1. Tao Te Ching (TTC), Chapter LXX:

Therefore the Sage wears clothes of coarse cloth but
Carries jewels in his bosom

5. The Satyagraha Ashram is on the bank of the Sabarmati.

7. TTC, Chapter LXXVIII.

8-9. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book I:

… who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

12-14. A Gandhian quote.

15-29. TTC, Chapter LXVII:

I have three treasures, which I hold and
keep safe:
The first is called love;
The second is called moderation;
The third is called not venturing to go ahead
Of the world.

22. TTC, Chapter XV:

He is yielding, like ice that is going to melt

23-24. TTC, Chapter VIII:

The highest goodness is like water. Water is beneficent to all things but does not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao.

30-31. Freedom At Midnight co-authored by Dominic Lapierre.

32-33. The Fire Sermon, TWL:

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.

34. The same:

When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

42. The Tempest:

Miranda: Sir, are not you my father?
Prospero: Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and
She said thou wast my daughter

4. ORDEAL BY FIRE

Lines 5-9. The Ramayana, retold by R.K. Narayan:

…Sita broke down. "My trials are not ended yet," she cried. "I thought with your victory all our troubles were at an end…! So be it." She beckoned to Lakshmana and ordered, "Light a fire at once, on this very spot."

10-12. The same:

Rama explained that he had to adopt this trial in order to demonstrate Sita’s purity beyond a shadow of doubt to the whole world.

17-19. The Fire Sermon (TWL):

To Carthage I came
Burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning

5. WHAT THE RIVER SAID

Line 1. Siddhartha, the eponymous hero of Herman Hesse’s novel. The lines that follow are also indebted to the Hilda Rosner translation of this lyrical fiction.

10. Death By Water, TWL:

15-16. Existence (E) is given by the Vedantic equation E = AUM.

22-24. What The Thunder Said:

Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands.

33. The same:

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation

43-44. Burial Of The Dead:

Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you

50. What The Thunder Said:

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water

71. The Song Celestial:

The world of sense can no more stain his soul
Than waters mar th’ enamelled lotus leaf.

76. AUM – the only reality.

tinai 1