From Dust to Dust: A Voyage
Dr. Nandini Sahu
New Delhi, India
Air
In the Air’s dirge and in its uncanny speech
In the symbolic inscape, towards an anonymousacreage to reach.
In the muted melancholy, winding round and round
In the deep scars of ages, sheltering words from their sound.
The ‘anatomy of love’ just glossed over the bracelet of the heart
The ruthless self-probing did create a mayhem and then an amendment.
In the cosmic plane and in the evolutionary destiny of man
On the sanctified invocation to the Muse, in aninterminablefusion.
Oh virgin air!! Please tell me, what is sacred and what is profane?
Death levels all, from dust to dust—to the five elementswe are prone.
Water
And then the Air went on wandering upon blue Water.
Blue was the motif, pure blue, unguarded and blessed.
Why did their guilty tongues stagger without a purpose?
Was a thirsty yearning woman denied water amid all abundance?
Yes water is virtuous in myriad ways, not evil even when not good.
Water is reverie to nurturebeyond all achievement and disappointment.
Like Sophocles’, water soothed the bereaved soul of my fiery being,
Like Everest, water stood tall amid sledgehammer and lute.
Of course my daily life is my temple, my faith and conviction.
With watermark I ascend earthly heights, towards a quivering sun.
Earth
I had been cohesive with the woodlands, I being the Earth.
I blossomed on the blooms, and then flourished wateryfresh.
In the avocadosprouts, the vines were my attitudes.
My senses flowered on every bush, and in my vulnerable arms.
Whitecaps in the soaringpointedgrassland, and in the silvery murkiness
And the sea side respired with me, and the looping waves.
Trembled through the stomata of my own membrane
I had been cohesive with the woodlands, I being the Earth.
Our paradise was occupied with celebration of light to rejoice the fusion
The green Earth was adorned with buds for the invocation.
Fire
I said let there be Fire and Fire there was!
The wandering soul ascended naked and with pride unabashed.
I earned love, I deserved to drink to the lees, filling life’s cups numerous.
I have been just a giver, an instrument of giving,conquering all fire.
Life! You owe me a debt, you made me the eternal Socrates.
In the jeopardy of the abysmal, you have unsettled my winged feet.
I fear no fire now, all fire engulfed in me with time implicit
No fear of time-eternal,death or even any daintyunknotted route.
Love is the intermittent flux, a fiery‘me’ enters its mode of being
I powder a single essence into myriad forms, the blue firmamentis watching.
Sky
Oh! The sky is ablaze with gulmohur this sepia noon,
With champak and jasmine composed from the mellowing dawn.
New leaves sprouting on the banyan stems, yearning skyward
Honey-bees conduit, piping the budding figs; blooms call the bees homeward.
Coral and ivory lilies reveal their fragile gold
The insects and kingfishers perturb the plumy sedge.
Round the gloom of my lonesome nightfall,ululates a carnival of lights,
Like Plato, I trust justice is loftier than injustice, they deliberate it or not!!
Today’s Air is my god-self, to persist forever unblemished.
Much in it is my not-yet being, still today’s ether is bright-winged.