Seven lights
Srinivas S
Assistant Professor,
Sri Sathya Institute of Higher Learning.
The merest shade of violet limns the verve
Of wealth in woolen stealth and of the health
Decembers steal from rainbows’ foremost nerve;
It writes of elegance, and of the mirth
That melancholy deep thro’ poetry serves
To indigo estates thro’ eastern nights.
An indigo awak’ning is a blur:
Between the skies and seas, it keeps a peace,
Uneasy as the Love that rocks does stir;
A kin of poignant lights in liquids traced,
Dissolving ere the eyes that them bestirred,
It whistles into blue, ‘a northern breeze.
No dye is dull as blue; no tint so deep
In seas asleep; no hue as true to tunes
From hearts whose ache the (g)olden summers keep.
No colour has the shades that blue unspools;
No nook of night the blue that insight reaps
From black; as green’s unearthed from southern lights.
A standing blade of green thro’ acid rain
Rebates with hope the hearts repulsed by Mars
As nascent ones erupt with earthy st(r)ains;
They seek the Heavens, but hitched not to stars,
Retain a love of roots and life’s refrains;
And beckon yellow home, from Western firths.
The ‘yin’ of yellow grates; the ‘yang’ tho’ sings
Of glorious Suns, by autumn dappled once—
Again, as yellowed leaves prelude the spring;
The contrasts tho’ are myths, and Thought does wince
At Sight that sees in Light a brace of wings;
As orange tiptoes by, a wand’ring monk.
An orange thought is deep or dire, a deed
In orange ‘tire mayhap a flame or fire;
One heals a wound; one burns the lees to feed
Its blind decrees, with soaring seeds of ire!
An orange rest, though, needs no preening heed,
Though red is here, its right of passage, last.
A reddened rose reports of war no more
Than redder roses strain to love again,
For ends begin, and walls have opening doors.
A redder dart than rage remains unseen –
Rebuilding broken lands by breaking mores –
That brooks no white in its pursuit of Peace…
Though White indwells the seven lights as Ease.