Hira Singhs Farewell To Burmah
On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie, With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky: A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet, Our lips may close on each other’s lips, but never our souls may meet. For though in […]
Golden Eyes
Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes! Oh Eyes so softly gay! Wherein swift fancies fall and rise, Grow dark and fade away. Eyes like a little limpid pool That holds a sunset sky, While on its surface, calm and cool, Blue water lilies lie. Oh Tender Eyes, oh Wistful Eyes, You smiled on me […]
From Behind The Lattice
I see your red-gold hair and know How white the hidden skin must be, Though sun-kissed face and fingers show The fervour of the noon-day glow, The keenness of the sea. My longing fancies ebb and flow, Still circling constant unto this; My great desire (ah, whisper low) To plant on thy forbidden snow […]
Feroza
The evening sky was as green as Jade, As Emerald turf by Lotus lake, Behind the Kafila far she strayed, (The Pearls are lost if the Necklace break!) A lingering freshness touched the air From palm-trees, clustered around a Spring, The great, grim Desert lay vast and bare, But Youth is ever a careless […]
Feroke
The rice-birds fly so white, so silver white, The velvet rice-flats lie so emerald green, My heart inhales, with sorrowful delight, The sweet and poignant sadness of the scene. The swollen tawny river seeks the sea, Its hungry waters, never satisfied, Beflecked with fallen log and torn-up tree, Engulph the fisher-huts on either side. […]
Fate Knows No Tears
Just as the dawn of Love was breaking Across the weary world of grey, Just as my life once more was waking As roses waken late in May, Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making, Stepped in and carried you away. Memories have I none in keeping Of times I held you near my heart, Of […]
Farewell
Farewell, Aziz, it was not mine to fold you Against my heart for any length of days. I had no loveliness, alas, to hold you, No siren voice, no charm that lovers praise. Yet, in the midst of grief and desolation, Solace I my despairing soul with this: Once, for my life’s eternal consolation, […]
Fancy
Far in the Further East the skilful craftsman Fashioned this fancy for the West’s delight. This rose and azure Dragon, crouching softly Upon the satin skin, close-grained and white. And you lay silent, while his slender needles Pricked the intricate pattern on your arm, Combining deftly Cruelty and Beauty, That subtle union, whose child […]
Famine Song
Death and Famine on every side And never a sign of rain, The bones of those who have starved and died Unburied upon the plain. What care have I that the bones bleach white? To-morrow they may be mine, But I shall sleep in your arms to-night And drink your lips like wine! Cholera, […]
Early Love
Who says I wrong thee, my half-opened rose? Little he knows of thee or me, or love.– I am so tender of thy fragile youth, Yea, in my hours of wildest ecstasy, Keeping close-bitted each careering sense. Only I give mine eyes unmeasured law To feed them where they will, and _their_ delight Was […]
Disappointment
Oh, come, Beloved, before my beauty fades, Pity the sorrow of my loneliness. I am a Rosebush that the Cypress shades, No sunbeams find or lighten my distress. Daily I watch the waning of my bloom. Ah, piteous fading of a thing so fair! While Fate, remorseless, weaving at her loom, Twines furtive silver […]
Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp
She is glad to receive your turquoise ring, Dear and dark-eyed Lover of mine! I, to have given you everything: Beauty maddens the soul like Wine. “She is proud to have held aloof her charms, Slender, dark-eyed Lover of mine! But I, of the night you lay in my arms: Beauty maddens the sense […]
Dedication
I, who of lighter love wrote many a verse, Made public never words inspired by thee, Lest strangers’ lips should carelessly rehearse Things that were sacred and too dear to me. Thy soul was noble; through these fifteen years Mine eyes familiar, found no fleck nor flaw, Stern to thyself, thy comrades’ faults and […]
Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson
I, who of lighter love wrote many a verse, Made public never words inspired by thee, Lest strangers’ lips should carelessly rehearse Things that were sacred and too dear to me. Thy soul was noble; through these fifteen years Mine eyes familiar, found no fleck nor flaw, Stern to thyself, thy comrades’ faults and […]
Camp Followers Song Gomal River
We have left Gul Kach behind us, Are marching on Apozai,– Where pleasure and rest are waiting To welcome us by and by. We’re falling back from the Gomal, Across the Gir-dao plain, The camping ground is deserted, We’ll never come back again. Along the rocks and the defiles, The mules and the camels […]
Back To The Border
The tremulous morning is breaking Against the white waste of the sky, And hundreds of birds are awaking In tamarisk bushes hard by. I, waiting alone in the station, Can hear in the distance, grey-blue, The sound of that iron desolation, The train that will bear me from you. ‘T will carry me under […]
Au Salon
A sky intensely blue, a low, white wall Against it heaps of up-blown yellow sand, A sleeping figure, holding in her hand Some scarlet cactus blossom; that was all. And yet so mellowly the sunbeams fell Upon the sunburnt limbs, such subtle play Of rosy light and tender shadow lay Upon the upturned face, […]
Atavism
Deep in the jungle vast and dim, That knew not a white man’s feet, I smelt the odour of sun-warmed fur, Musky, savage, and sweet. Far it was from the huts of men And the grass where Sambur feed; I threw a stone at a Kadapu tree That bled as a man might bleed. […]
Ashore
Out I came from the dancing-place: The night-wind met me face to face– A wind off the harbour, cold and keen, “I know,” it whistled, “where thou hast been.” A faint voice fell from the stars above– “Thou? whom we lighted to shrines of Love!” I found when I reached my lonely room A […]
Among The Sandhills
Lie still, Beloved, I also see the day Shoot his white arrows through the trembling sky, But what is dawn to us, who cast away All sense of time that mars our ecstasy ? The scented orange bushes check the breeze Granting in tribute many waxen stars, And aromatic Eucalyptus trees Defy the sun […]
Among The Rice Fields
She was fair as a Passion-flower, (But little of love he knew.) Her lucent eyes were like amber wine, And her eyelids stained with blue. He called them the Gates of Fair Desire, And the Lakes where Beauty lay, But I looked into them once, and saw The eyes of Beasts of Prey. He […]
Afridi Love
Since, Oh, Beloved, you are not even faithful To me, who loved you so, for one short night, For one brief space of darkness, though my absence Did but endure until the dawning light; Since all your beauty–which was _mine_–you squandered On _that_ which now lies dead across your door; See here this knife, […]
Adoration
Who does not feel desire unending To solace through his daily strife, With some mysterious Mental Blending, The hungry loneliness of life? Until, by sudden passion shaken, As terriers shake a rat at play, He finds, all blindly, he has taken The old, Hereditary way. Yet, in the moment of communion, The very heart […]
zen: a very short history by Raj Arumugam
dhyana went to China from China Ch’an went to Japan and Japan gave the world Zen Copyright ©: Raj Arumugam ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic […]
you witness my dying by Raj Arumugam
you witness my dying by Raj Arumugam you witness my dying as you see my life, my hopes and desires and all my embarrassments and my achievements too, dear moon O quiet presence, O radiant presence all one’s life; and what do you look at these days in my life darling moon what do you […]
you say you love the earth by Raj Arumugam
you say you love the earth love the ocean but you don’t really do otherwise you wouldn’t have pissed poison in there; and even when you protest you do, you do you just love it for your own and so I’m taking it away from you you say you love the skies but do you […]
you are there moon by Raj Arumugam
you are there moon by Raj Arumugam you are there moon; I thought you were not and I went to sleep and I sighed: “She will not come, not tonight; she has some other lover”; and I went to sleep and then much later now I wake up and you’ve come, out there and your […]
word of God by Raj Arumugam
I never speak of God but people keep telling me about God and they keep telling me: This is the Word of God! Or they brandish a Book before me and they say: This is the Final Word of God! But I say: Look, I’ve just had a Revelation; God has just spoken to me; […]
women picking edible plants by Raj Arumugan
a little more haste, neighbor, as we pick edible plants on these slopes of the mountains; the air is fresh and the delicate plants abundant enough though one has to humble oneself by leaning down to these rare ones; we will bring them home and some we can eat fresh and raw and most we […]
what I want to know by Raj Arumugam
what I want to know what I’d really like to know before I drop down dead or crawl into amnesia or alzheimer’s or whatever; what I really want to know (if I can remember it; let me see if I can recall it, refresh please…. try and retrieve it from the backwaters of my mind) […]
what a poet must do by Raj Arumugam
a poet, it is said, must be pure and holy; a poet, it is decreed, must bring truth and clarity; a poet, it is declared, must use words good and sublime; a poet, it is said must choose subjects that are sanctioned and chaste like the moon and stars and butterflies and innocent creatures of […]
was it you, mooon? by Raj Arumugam
was it you, mooon? by Raj Arumugam cold moon I am sad; was it you, distant moon, who made me so tonight? Copyright ©: Raj Arumugam ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster […]
walking with a staff by Raj Arumugam
walking with a staff by Raj Arumugam I did not want the courts and the life of the cities and I did not want the struggle but I did not leave – perhaps it was me that saw the tension but could not come into integrity and put the blame on duty, care and responsibility […]
The village girl models for the artist, 1904 by Raj Arumugam
You want me to talk, Sir? I’d relax and you can paint better, Sir? Maybe, Sir…maybe, but what shall I say, Sir? For I am not used to talking to important people like you, Sir… Why do you laugh, Sir? It is true, I’m just a girl from the village, Sir attending to Laxmi and […]
The Discovery of the Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
Part 1 At the Saint’s Book Store (Singapore, 1970) when I was just 15 and just after a trip to the National Library I saw a slim volume at the Saint’s Book Store (named after a TV series and true to the borrowed name, a second-hand book store) and its spine said: Kama Sutra Now […]
Taking yourself too seriously by Raj Arumugam
OK, granted, you got to take yourself seriously or no one will – but take yourself too seriously and you’re like a cracking statue about to crumble there’s too much really of people running around taking themselves too seriously pushing themselves forward putting their faces to the forefront almost pushing it against other people’s arses […]
Sohni and her love Mahinwal by Raj Arumugam
Sohni and her love Mahinwal by Raj Arumugam Sohni’s heart pines for Mahinwal for she loves him beyond all things earthly By day she paints flowers on the pots her father makes O Sohni’s heart is always filled with love And by night she swims across with a pot to help her float and she […]
sadness from the night by Raj Arumugam
sadness from the night by Raj Arumugam last night as the clouds spread thin breaking like long dry leaves long in the open there was a loneliness; last night as the street lights cast their glow on the walls and their fingertips touched my lips there was a sadness; last night as the cool wind […]
run home, run home butterfly by Raj Arumugam
run home, run home butterfly by Raj Arumugam run home run home butterfly; run run fly fly fly there’s rain and hail and the wind blows wild; what are you doing flitting idly by? run home run home butterfly; run run fly fly fly duck for cover excuse the expression; hide under a tree or […]
Rip van Winkle’s dream by Raj Arumugam
Rip van Winkle’s dream by Raj Arumugam I slept for twenty years comfortably below the tree up in the quiet mountains and all that time I lay in a sleep as deep as before I came to my mother’s womb and yes, I had dreams in those two decades of sleep – but no, I […]