With you beside me
no longer,
rootless
a waterweed
I float -
a flotsam
redolent
of a carnival
now all over,
bobbing up and down
on the sluggish river
journeying
to the unknown
With you beside me
I strode the earth
a Titan?-
secure, strong, sufficient?-
anchored in you;
unknowing
I was strong
With you beside me...
. . . . . . . . .
Oh! when shall we meet,
now again,
as you and me,
to tell you,
be assured you knew,
I held you dear,
however I was
with you beside me.
The yawning thought
it shall never be?-
that I must bear the cross
of unatoned debt
that must ever
remain unatoned
remains
an abiding pain?-
the pang
the thought?-
it was
but
a one-time encounter.
I can say this is masterpiece of a poem. In this context I cannot help quoting T S Eliot to pay my tribute to Srinivasa Rangaswami: 'Great simplicity is only won by an intense moment or by years of intelligent effort or by both. It represents one of the most arduous conquests of the human spirit, the triumph of feeling and thought over the natural sin of language.'
Here are a few lofty lines from his poem: The Enigma
With you beside me no longer, now
slipped into a date and a thithi
Crouched I lie, with memories?
memories of yesteryears, of years before,
memories of us together...
. . . . . .
Memories of togetherness
thro' years we grew up together,
each to the other
in a golden bond a deep attachment,
Memories of the autumnal calm
aglow with moments shared and lived
serene, rich, in deep fulfillment.
All memories...
Are we but projectiles in lone trajectories
intersecting on this earth
in a brief encounter,
only to hurry on...
on paths our own,
leaving behind
just a heap of memories,
dearly held, fiercely held,
for a while,
to be washed away by the tide of TIME
and tossed into oblivion?
After reading these sublime and elemental lines of poetry, I could only ask this question: 'And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up?'
On the endless and eternal drama of transitory human life, let us hear Rangaswami in his poem: Relationships. Here are a few selected lines from this poem:
Curtains down, the play over,
attached identities untied.
what are you to one another?
Are we not all chance acquaintances
come together somehow, for a while, in the play,
to part and go our individual ways
in the ceaseless journey,
lone, unknown... ?
Srinivasa Rangaswami proclaims through his poem - Nothing in Vain - that life is not an empty dream. It is real; it is earnest; and the grave is not its goal. Here are his resounding words of poetry:
There is verily a hidden purpose and a plan
in all of God's creation. Only we do not see.
Every end presages a new beginning
in a grand cycle of perpetual renewal
and evolution. So that this our earth
shall remain
forever new and young.
The mysteriously flashing meteor of life is portrayed by Rangaswami as follows:
A speck, a spark,
A cosmic accident,
A meteorite hit...
Our life on this earth
is a glorious birth....
A carnival of blessings
A largess of happiness
of experience tingling
in every fiber of our being.
I fully endorse the magisterial verdict of Dr Krishna Srinivas on Srinivasa Rangaswami; 'With Blakean simplicity and Pindaric excellence, Poet Srinivasa Rangaswami has carved his name in the monumental edifice of Parnassus. His poems are extensions of his experiences'. The electrifying clarity of Rangaswami's poems reminded me of the following lightning lines of William Blake:
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress
Rangaswami's poetry is a conversation with the World. It is a conversation with the words on the page in which he allows those words to speak back to you. Indeed, his poetry is a timeless conversation with himself and yourself.
