Sunday, July 21, 2013

High Flight


Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds
- and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Invictus


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Oshun by Neha

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

- Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

मधुशाला


प्यास तुझे तो, विश्व तपाकर पूणर् निकालूँगा हाला
एक पाँव से साकी बनकर नाचूँगा लेकर प्याला
जीवन की मधुता तो तेरे ऊपर कब का वार चुका
आज निछावर कर दूँगा मैं, तुझपर जग की मधुशाला॥२॥


चलने ही चलने में कितना जीवन, हाय, बिता डाला!
' दूर अभी है ' , पर, कहता है हर पथ बतलानेवाला
हिम्मत है न बढ़ूँ आगे, साहस है न फ़िरूँ पीछे
किंकतर्व्यविमूढ़ मुझे कर दूर खड़ी है मधुशाला॥५॥


मुख से तू अविरत कहता जा मधु, मदिरा, मादक हाला
हाथों में अनुभव करता जा एक ललित कल्पित प्याला
ध्यान किए जा मन में सुमधुर सुखकर, सुंदर साकी का
और बढ़ा चल, पथिक, न तुझको दूर लगेगी मधुशाला॥६॥


हरिवंश राय बच्चन