A Lover And A Wanderer

SYED AMEERUDDIN'S POETRY

Sri Aurobindo visioned future poetry' as mystical and meaningful. To Sarojini Naidu, poetry is orches­tration of senses. But poets of Seventies act as a bridge between tradition and dream worlds of surr­ealism. They hear dark voices silent to others. Their lyrics sweep into the sun. Passion and vehemence leap in waves of rhetoric, twistings of the phrases, paradoxes and ingenuities. They are poems of reality— not realism: of sentiment—not sentimentality. Their restraint of emotions is often judged as cold, abstract, intellectual—often very difficult. These poets speak in images.

There are frequent dialogues between poet and the world. The poet is caught up in something that infinitely surpasses him. There is an awareness of the presence of things in space and the present moment in time. Past and future are ideas: only the present is real.

Jorge Guillen's 'Beyond' is an excellent exposi" tion of this precept;

"Ail things, the millennial

Sum of our being, packed

Into the web of a minute

Eternally here, and my own.

 

As over the instant

That ranges in ceaseless succession

I pass through eternity's tension

To salvage the present.

 

The blood races on; if flows

With a fatal avidity.

A destiny blindly assembles.

Itself: I will that I be.

To be—only that I It suffices

For pure delectation !

Thus, in a kinship of silence

To be one with the essences I'"

 

The whole of Ameeruddin's poems is an ascen­sion towards love. The poet attains through love the fullness of reality. Love yields him its greatest treasure. The act of love surges and resurges. He traces the passionate multi-facets of love and presents in very evocative way the process and evolution of love from the ideal and platonic to the pragmatic and surrealistic trends of our time:

''Gypsy river runs through my bones.

This road where you and I stand

Leads back to a barren land

We have left far behind......

Let us part, I must wander.

Do not follow me.

Let the love

      in your eyes

      blossom

      into secret

      constellations."

 

Ameeruddin is a realist of the senses. The two realities, the earth and the soul, are firm in his own. The winding galleries of his mind unfurl strange tunes. There is verbal magic in his verses. Green echoes haunt him like a passion. He feels poetry like fire in his hands. He replaces meanings by sugges­tions. Unsuspected impulses and unfathomable fears throb and explode.

Nature to him is a merciless genetic force which transmits to its creatures its own frenzied fury. Man-nature's favorite offering—mirrors its riotous cruelty. Love is stripped of its sentimental wrappings and reduced to the starkness of its violent rapture.

Like Lorca, Ameeruddin hungers for static inward illumination:

"Love is awakened in the greyness of its rhythm.

Our interior sky contains a triumph of blood.

But all our optimism

turns to sorrow.

To contemplate

the dead drops on the glass

And these drops

are eyes of the infinite; gazing

Back into the white infinity

which is their parent.

Each drop of water

trembles on the dim glass

Leaving divine

wounds of diamond.

They are poets of water

who have seen and meditate

Things which the vast crowds of rivers ignore."

                                                                    (Lorca in Lluvia')

There is sheer imagistic delicacy as in "Remini­scences:"

 

"we sit together

holding each pulsating rhythm

in cascaded heart

and eloquent in dumb deeds

We felt the creep

of velvety longings

and eternity captured

in mute mellow mystic night"

 

and as in ' Love Strings :"

 

"Yet another night

I gazed and gazed

on your rippling smiles

and diving through

your spectroscopic eyes

saw the hidden spectrum

of soul's solace

in the dewy dusk in you."

 

Ameeruddin is restless of the waltzing civilisation. He lays bare the agony in the inner recesses of his soul. His poetry is lyrical and subjective: has the stamp of his unique personality — a slenderness, a nervous subtlety which makes him the finest and the most sensitive of our contemporary poets. In his "A Warning," he cries:

What happened

to that stupendous glory of man ?

The ancient Nile...

and Mahenjadaro... The great Greeks...

and the Roman grandeur... To what disastrous doom

they were destined.

Is a monumental reminder

To the ever soaring And all bewildering

                              civilisation of Today...

                              of its frightful fate

                              and its

                               Dreadful Doom To Come..."

 

Here is a poem fit to adorn the airports of all warring nations.

Will humans pause and listen ?

Future is ephemeral, a mirage, a wheel coming to a circle.

 

KRISHNA SRINIVAS

1—12-1980

 

POEM

A LOVER AND A WANDERER  -

               PART I

You came to me that way, a stranger,

We travelled together transparently,

A cascade—your heart singing, your lips longing.

Then, I felt

Your radiant eyes meeting mine,

Oh I what's all, a challenge, an acceptance;

You call it love or no love,

I consider it a moment alive

Craving for the secret oneness

Of our buzzing bodies.

 

That evening, I filled my hands

With the darkness of your long tresses

And whispered into your ears;

"Do not search for love

In the savage wilderness of the heart.

Let us simply share

The passion of the twilight:

And I shall touch the dizzy dark zenith

With your thundering thighs:

When the violence is over

I will explore the

Simmering silence of the seas

And shores beyond.

 

That midnight.

We perched in a twilighty bower

To experience a purple paradise.

 

The night light burned, and we slept

Keeping the love we had stored inside.

We undressed in silent submission

Into the rippling force of the whirlwind.

 

Frantically, I drew

Your body to my hairy chest:

You with your amorous hisses

Anchored my waving waist and

Started caressing the secret

Fibres of my frame

And flooding rivers ran through us

To meet at a calm confluence.

 

All that night,

Our mouths exchanged breath

Of smoky fragrance. Thus

Mute modulations cut across

The tangled hurricane bodies

Till our lusty cyclone was

Reduced to a dumb quititude.

 

The hectic and gentler love-time over,

My fingers cried for your fingers

My arms held you again, we clung

To each other through the void of night

No words, no regrets, no wonder,

only the syllables of silence

Crisscrossing inbetween us:

Its' only from passion love springs,

Life is to live and to experience;

A moment alive is a paradise

Better than a life strings attached

And passions smothered.

 

I and you, we are alone.

Loneness, lust and agony—the reality

Only memories like our shadows haunt,

If passions diffuse a few

The same passions give rise to new ones.

The night grew transparent

The delirium of the flesh ached:

Therefore, dear, let us part

As lovers and strangers.

Love is what we felt and shared

In that timeless moment of passion.

Let us part ...

I listen to the stealthy footsteps

Of the chasing sun at dawn,

I must rush. Journey is long ...

 

It's time for me to go...

Goodbye dear, goodbye !

Someday, we shall meet as strangers

With rivers on our shoulders

On a wild torrent night

To resurrect our love

With the brutal anonymity

Of grief and acquaintance.

Goodbye! Goodbye I

Carefree into the winding ways

Unbounded, I must walk

A head start for tomorrow

Leaving the reminiscence of past

Where I am, and tread

Forward in the exilirating future.

A wild winding path. Journey is long,

I must wander, I must wander:

There is storm in my lone soul

And the whirly waves are calling.

 

PART - II

 

We met once again

Reconciling our differences, as strangers,

With encased thoughts and renewed desires,

We encirled in each others arms

To steal the colours from the rainbow,

To crush the lilting moon inbetween us

In the still of night rhythms rocked,

We closed our eyes.  Our hands discovered

All the secrets of our body.

All around us the passions swirlad.

With rivers of wild scream

In our violent blood,

We captured and crushed

The raging storm, which

Flashed through our whirly bodies.

Thus that night, the sea is caught

In our juicy whispers of oneness ...

 

You came upon me

in that fleeting light, when

1 was chasing the fugitive moon

With flooding rivers on your palms

To hold me in the hurricane of passions.

Like a gypsy, I stood inside

The rainscape, muttering your name

With the melody of muteness.

Your eyes radiated lightning.

The cyclone centred in your dark tresses

 

As you embraced me with your

Snaky wriggles, I became more and more

Aware of my loneness, a man alone ...

 

Now, I watch my loneness

Growing in the vast sky.

And the darkness inherits my silence*

I know, you feel perturbed

At my cataclysmic despair.

But dear listen

Wherever I go I feel that

I cannot escape myself.

When night falls.

Your sweet whispers haunt me:

I love you.  Love me again

Even without love'.   My tongue

Longs for your tongue, and suddenly

In my thoughts, you surround me

With the snakes in your embrace.

But this is just a

Torrential tension in my mind,

A momentary criss-cross.

Which fades away, when

The real quest of my spirit

And my lone song comes to the fore...

 

Therefore dear,

Let us meet as strangers,

And pretend for a moment

You are mine and I am yours,

In this wild torrent night

To resurrect and rejuvenate our love

With the brutal anonymity

Of grief and acquaintance,

Let us remake end rebuild

The moment of purple paradise

and to relive a moment alive.

Dear as you know,

My target is the fugitive moon.

A carefree wanderer.

The dark and deep woods are beckoning.

A wild winding path, I have to cross

To experience and explore

The labyrinthine webs of humanity.

 

Dear, in your eyes

I watched my shattered dreams

Grow in the purple twilight:

I grew up in the town.

Went through the mill of rituals.

Temperamentally an artist

Frank and loved to be free.

But, I was made an onion,

By putting on my spirit

Layer after layer of all

Shams of religion, creed

and artificialities of hollow living.

My artistic quest rebelled,

Wandered from place to place

To discover my true self.

The reality of life by

Shattering the web of hypocrisy.

Came to a city, settled as

A teacher, poet; enjoyed the

Pleasures and pangs of being

A lover, husband, father, friend and foe.

The closer I got to forty, more

I am disillusioned and more

I became aware of my loneness,

Anguish and passion. The rest

Is an eye-wash — a perfect sham.

 

I have wandered all the lonely woods

And watched the lonesome fractured cities at sunset.

I spoke to every tired passerby

In my ways and shared strange secrets.

There is emptiness and show everywhere.

I found only my loneness and my encounter,

Through this glittering contours,

whispered in me the reality beyond bounds.

My vagabond satchel replete

With all my sorrows   This sadeyed night

Lingers all my lilting moon breaking songs.

Dear, let us pretend as strangers.

I am like nobody since you loved me.

And I am the nowhereman.

Gypsy river runs through my bones.

This road where you and I stand

Leads back to barren land

We have left far behind ...

Let us part, I must wander.

Do not follow me.  Let the love in your

Eyes blossom into secret constellations.

 

Dear, let there be smile on your lips.

Let your whispers create the new music of love.

I have the compassion of the storms.

For me loving and unloving are one.

Like the sea rips the sea gulls apart,

Let us part. Journey is long. I have to go.

The bewildered hurricane bangs upon the door.

The wind breaks into splinters of glass.

The eye of the storm has centred in my head.

I must go ! Irresistible is the call !

Let us caress each other like cats do

And part. Journey is long. I must go.

I have decided to shun the abocryphal alibi.

I made my confession to be alone.

You may come in my restless dreams

With the secret temptations of your lust.

But its all a word written with smoke.

Me and my mind blasting loneness remains.

My encounter with men and matter

Has to evolve its own code of

Happiness, do's and don'ts ...

My experience, my commitment

In the human interaction

Must make me discover

My true self and true identity

To find harmony with my inner and outer self.

 

Therefore dear, let us part.

Now that the passion is quenched.

River in you is emptied.

Preserve the moment alive.

Someday, we shall meet as strangers

To revive end resurrect

Our purple paradise.

Goodbye ! Goodbye !

Let us part. I must wander...

There are some more lone song forests

I must explore.

Some more tried cities I must wander.

Many more eager women

Who enchant me, I have to scale.

Some more seeds of adventure I have to sow.

I have to witness drama in each man's life.

And wipe the tears from every deserving eye.

I long to live, to chide and challenge.

I am a wanderer, winding is the path.

Journey is long.  Sea is calling.

The cycolone is going to slash.

Dusky twilight has set on your blurred brows.

Goodbye! Goodbye!

I am the nowhere man, let me travel lonely.

Long is the journey.   I must wander.

Dark are the woods. It's time for me to go ...

 

PART III

In the summer of tender love times

When I stood inside the seascape,

Mocking at the blue light of the fugitive moon,

I felt the leachy creeps

On my wet feet, and watched your

Fevered eyes in the growing lusty twilight.

All around me.

My sunken secret passions

Swirled afresh in reinforced Vigour.

My loneliness damped with springlude.

I swung langorously in between

The state of sleep and wakefulness,

Like a sperm spattering, m

Tantalisingly twisty snake.

Memories never fade.   Stormy recoil.  A recall ...

I know.  I told you :

'Dear, let us pretend as strangers.

I am like nobody, since you loved me.

And I am the nowhere man.

Gypsy livers run through my bones".

 

Leaves lie faded on this withered woodenscape.

Scissoring silence transcends the opaque sky.

The wild birds turn dumb.

I watch my loneliness growing in the distant sky.

Only mute hurricane vibrations

Hurl a simmering slash in my inner self...

This fatigued evening is fractured

By the storm of reminiscence.

And stirred the wild wastes of my memory ...

A nectar spring swirls,

 

A twilighty tapestry of pain and Joy:

Let us part I must wander.

Do not follow me.   Let the love in your

Eyes blossom into secret constellations.

Someday, we shall meet as strangers.

Dear as you know,

My target is the fugitive moon.

A carefree wanderer.

A wild winding path,

I have to cross

To experience and explore

The labyrinthine webs of humanity.'

 

A lone ranger, since then ...

I wandered enough the lonely woods

And watched enough

The deformed and decayed cities at sun set.

I also experienced the horror of opaque living.

Mute minute boredoms of the modern life.

And mind blowing,

Hollow stoicisms of the fractured souls.

This gypsy wanders,

Through this wild hawkish lone woods

And dazzling conflegrate cities have taught:

'Everything hinges on a lie, a fragile illusion'.

Further, I have encountered,

In this snaky path of fire-flies :

People with vague longings of flight,

With leaky souls, a split existence,

With the vanity of Himalayan wishes.

And with the twisted rage of a ganges in spate.

Yet, I have observed:

People grieve for the glorious past.

Without understanding the essence.

 

tn the vain reminiscence of obsolete past,

People lose track of the present, the current flood.

The vibrating real life: which

Results in despair, darkness and deception ..

 

Unless, people trample upon the decomposed past

They cannot experience the realms of the present.

Otherwise,

Everything hinges on a lie, a fragile illusion.

A wishy-washy world of sham.

A horrified herd of hoax.

On the whole a life without life.

A mute raphsody.

That is; a life on lies ...

Which deceptively deepens the despair

Of a simple people, unable

To cope with themselves.

Thus, the whole life appears

To be a big - 'RIDDLE', a big - *LIE ...

Because:

Lies are the smoke - screen of civilisation ...

 

Now there is desperate silence in my eyes.

My vagabond satchel is empty with its lonesongs.

Tired of lone ventures with their illusions and lies.

Your memories run like rivers in my body

With a desperate sun of longing in my bones.

Though too late, better than never ...

Now I realise our whispers of oneness,

The love we shared in lyric splendour,

The purple paradise we built,

Meaning of 'Forever' and truth you gave,

After scaling the wild winding path and

Exploring the strange secrets of

All the lonesome cities ...

 

Dear !   Is it possible to meet once again

As lovers, as strangers, reconciling our differences:

I know you have forgotten me.

That is not your fault:  I had

Asked you not to follow me, in my

Youthful zest and unriped quest...

Now my loneness haunts me

Like a devilish shadow.

I need ycu and your balmy company

To wander this wild winding path,

I require your silvery splendour

And rainbow passion, in my

Mission to wipe the tears and to face

The world of sham and life of lies.

Behind evey man's myopic mask ...

In order to chide, activise and challenge;

And turn the course of the age old current

On the basis of mutual encounter and experience.

I am a wanderer. A lone ranger.

I am the nowhere man. No doubt I

But I am vexed and lost my course

With my lone and lousy adventures ...

Dear, long is the Journey, winding is the path.

Where are you ? How are you ?

Whole celestial canopy, whizzes the symphony of

                                                             cemetery.

Only the mocking fugitive moon must tell you

                                                           my plight ...

I am a wanderer. I have a goal. A purple purpose;

Dear I need you! Dear I need you !

Dark are the woods.

Long is the Journey.

But dear, you be my beacon light...

( Book Description - A Lover And A Wanderer - Published by -POETS PRESS INDIA - Chennai  in 1980 - 19 Poems in 50 Pages )