Fab India – 50 years of celebrating India
Evening
Did you think to thank the evening?
I am the evening,
I have a soul, old and real,
A being – an essence from another age –
The flowering sage,
Spilling gold,
The half-moon watching,
The glimmering petals of time
That bloom
Between the echoes
Of lost places,
The ravens recounting
Tales untold
Of yesteryear,
The wheel
Running on and on,
While the tadpole curls up into sleep.
Did you thank the One
Who made the evening?
Or did you assume that all came together
Just entirely by chance?
A lovely accident
With no intent?
Nothing to see,
An idle dance?
Yet the evening is a petal
On the deepening rose of time
By the haunting cliff, steep,
Blown in the owl-awakened wind,
Gently, as the clouds
Fold up into stars
And the clear sky sings
Her song with crowds
Of hummingbirds that chime,
Recalling the embers
Of lilting Septembers
From far, far away,
Traces of rain remembered,
The wall of China
Winds around the rolling hills,
From lands long ago
In the swirling snow.
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
Written September 14, 2021
Red cliffs
Within the red cliffs
Walk the feet of Shiva
Through the eternities of endless eons
In the sacred smoke of the kiva
Snow-
Flakes falling
Within the perceptive
Eyes
Of the pygmy owl,
Reflecting skies
Where green dragons
Sail over the seas and all the caves
Long gone,
Waves
Washing up along the coast
Where still,
Knives
Gleam
Of thieves
Hiding in the dark,
Ninja lives,
Deceptive
Whiffs –
A spark
Of whispered words,
Clever,
Sly eyes smile.
There is the space
Where
The rainbows
Rest
A while
Before the startling storms that howl
Before the white-throated swift’s nest
High up in the rock
Gathers up the errant wings – lost almost.
All the hills become
Encircled in weaves
Of patterns within the mist
Of gray stone.
Within the rain ahead
Flocks
Of night
Rain, loud,
Bold,
That never cease,
Unerring
In their treks of flight,
Within the black armies of the castled kingdoms,
War drums
Of the cloud.
All is here now,
The bow
Of the lone,
Ghost
Ship cuts across the furrow,
And all falls
Suddenly quiet.
Torrents cease.
Winds let go.
All returns
To within the peace
Of cliffs deep red
As the autumn
Moon
In the forgotten dimensions
Of forever. Soon
Will the wild paws
Of the forest
Lions,
Tiptoe
Again, with grace
In the clear singing of the dawn
With the moon-
Enchanting meadows
Gone,
Now turned to gold,
Held in the entrancing feathers of the sun,
While rags of clouds stream
Onward to the dance.
September 10, 2021
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
Where now is the mist-ringed bell
Where now is the mist-ringed bell
That tolls over the wandering wave
Of the gray
River?
The moon a sliver
In the sky?
Who can tell?
Where now the branches of the nagalingam tree that sway
And brush along the cool earthen banks,
Home of shy,
Determined snails,
Before the dawn of being,
Long before the chaos
Of disrepair
Grumbled through the dark hall
Of the subterranean cave.
Where now is the brave, ascending song
Of the gold-eyed buffalo burr,
Who clung to the canyon wall,
In the fierce, railing wind,
Her petals beaming in the sun,
The one
Proclaiming victory for the day,
Where now the call
Of the giant whales
Who dive beneath
The cliff rising from
The moving waters of infinity
In the indigo
Deeps
Of joy – whales who play
With their children, ocean games
In the seaweed-flowing mystery
Of their sparkling blue sea –
Where now the curious
Goat who leaps
Among the white patches of winter snow
Along the steep
Hill of the cedarbreak?
Where now the songs
From the ranks
Of all the charming, twisted juniper trees,
Their bark that curls around like smoke,
Whose wisdom
Belongs
To the light,
The moonrise,
And the night,
Who spoke
In the ever-whistling wind,
But then were felled by a cold-axed blow
Of barbarity and lies.
All their songs are fled away
To the far, far mountains of freedom
Where they echo,
Echo,
Gone
To the long
Hills,
Where God always sings
In the wandering dawn,
Waiting for the tumult and the chaos
To have ceased
On the ending day
When flames
That have hissed high
At long last fade,
Scattered away
On the winds,
Lost in the trills
Of birdsong
And the swarm
Of the bumblebee.
Then, in a world that has glided out of the gray mist,
The heart of the wild geese
Will sound once again,
Free,
As the flight
Of the numinous
Rose-winged beauty
Of the dragonflies
Along the lilting, frog-enchanted lake,
Humming.
Hear now the wings,
The presence
Of all the beings,
Released –
Watched over by the bright,
Night-shimmering form
Of Hamsa, the swan who flies
Over the green forest
Of yore,
Reawakened by her
All-knowing essence,
Beginning anew,
In a magic country,
The land of evermore,
Eternal, true
And ever-now,
In the mystical hour of the gray dawn.
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s book
Odd, isn’t it?
Odd –
How somehow
You never really minded
Accepting the accolades
Of those who trusted you —
Your young soldiers
Who gave their lives
To fight in your unending battles —
And the women and girls who placed
Their hope and trust in you —
And the brave and loyal
Friends who gave
So many years and
Sacrifices on your behalf —
Odd —
How you could never really recall
Any of their names.
But you gave them a form
To fill out,
With reassurances
And oh, so many empty words,
How very, very kind of you.
How thoughtful,
As you chose
With every conscious intention
Not to know,
Not to remember,
Not to help,
Not to be in any hurry at all,
Musn’t rush,
As their lives
Slipped away
Down the vacant,
Gaping hole in your memory –
Down to the flames
Of their destruction
By your abandonment
And your treachery.
Not your fault, of course.
Who could have known?
***
© Sharon St Joan, August 15, 2021
Reflection
“Perhaps the relevant stage is not the real world at all – but rather the world of fantasy, of art, of stories, of myth – myth is the best way to express it – this is the world of the spirit – of magical life.
“The “real” world, meaning the physical world – is not real at all – it is going, going, gone – on the way out – it is dead – a stream of images — and only the ethereal world of meanings and relevance is actually real or relevant. It continues.”
As the wise William Shakespeare wrote, in MacBeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- Thoughts, true or not true, from Jack
© 2021
The truth of Agni
The truth of Agni;
Fire consumes the illusion.
Trees walk on the black way
To the stars,
Trees who remember,
With the stones,
The earth’s enchanted bones,
The beginning and the ending,
The faces of the stones rise,
Red, gold,
Patterned in scars,
Walls of stone, tall,
Remembering
All
The dragonflies
And the elven folk
Of long ago;
No one believes
In them now
Though
They sang the truth of the stars.
In the ending – skies
Of gray
And white – oppression.
The smoke of time,
The embers
Of existence,
The age of blindness,
Of existential crime,
Treachery,
And war
Going now,
On the winds of time.
Shiva dancing both time and eternity,
In the stark
Winds that clear the smoke
Of being.
Soon, the bough
Of the oak
Will climb
Into the shimmering rain
Of Indra.
There, the face of Shiva
In the gold
Trees – twinkling among the leaves,
In a world so old –
That came before —
Yet shines again –
Now
In the ever-glimmering rain,
In the train
Of flowers,
In the arc
Of ancient powers.
***
Written August 7, 2021
© Sharon St Joan
The gulls
Before the moon will write
Gone
Now, the cloud-wandering
Of the winter night,
Before the moon
Will write
Her comments
Across the pale
Rock
Invoking
Those untraveled moments
Yet to be, when soon
The silver, ambling feet
Of quail
Will flock
To greet
The sky-winged
Innocence of dawn.
Written around 1990
© Sharon St Joan, 2021