I

It is dawn.
Brother, rise.
Let us give vent to the rising sun, and with claps of the
Mind, welcome its waking ecstasy.
Distances prevail — measured on the sun’s distance
From the soils.
Ephemeral, morn; so we shall set forth early to lay
In our wake prevarications of morn’s trite.
Let us wake the prelate and demand signs.
Even the signs of time conjure up such slip
On the murky ways of distance.
The owls hoot on leaves’ top, and suddenly the
Face of the sun coils into the void above, and
Tenterhooks tie our trekking feet with mocking gyves.
I break free and choose to walk alone.

II

Am I an iconoclast —stirring forth hungry woes
I enshroud myself in?
I doubt it seriously.
A prodigal comes home when the heavens withdraw
Every single star at night.
He borrows light from his own wandering eyes.
He learns not again to creep onto saddles of aversion.

I find here un-meek and un-heavenly.

The bars of abnegation barricade my views
Upon the clusters of stringed earths.

My eyes are veiled!
I see the fore and not the rear.

I started all the trouble.

Even the greatest raconteur cannot tell
Completely the tale of isolation.
For there I have landed my feet by the method of
The foetus.

When you have clambered through slimy, widowed
Canals, your feet gather soggy moss.


III

From a careful distance, at the mercy of proven light,
The rev of the engines
On the motorway get to me in my hole.
Even the somnambulist at sleep time walks on me
So reckless and feckless this city; people here have
Freckles on their mind-manners
And they do not cringe before the pronouncements of
Hard chastisements and flagellations.
I never for once failed to recall the days I summoned
Protocols of the bleeding feet, to ask why the days
Creep.
It became a futile summons, and the grounds refused
The views of footprints.
I hang all issues of Zen on desolation and ascend the groves
Of high tree twigs.

IV

I am webbed!
The stridulations of the winged ones are afar
Crepitations anywhere are dim and relegated to the
Backyard of ancestral senses.
Manners about me become strange and withered.
Flickers from burning tears shower my troubled face to
Rekindle life on it and throw light upon things long hidden from me.
Quite like summer which throws light on all things hidden through the
Other seasons!

I am full of attention.
I couldn’t concentrate more.
And I begin to reason.
From within the depth of this deep, teeth
Clatter, and there’s a toll from a deadened bell.
The floor of the temple is poachy
And I hear within the basement of my soul the
Swish of the metallic staff of direction.

Revealed to me is the Agony of Time.

I peer more intently and strain more patiently,
Receiving details of the causes of our hell and
Stagnation.
The moment attains more darkness and stops all sights,
Except those of the ravens and the crows.

The Agony of Time continues.