Saturday 3 October 2009

black and white

a hundred crows flutter
in a cawing cawing flutter
they wing
up and down and up and down and round
the crow
gleamy-eyed
shiny-feathered
lying on the warm sand
under the sun

***

8 comments:

Kalpana Bindu said...

The life circle isn't it amazing...the inevitable we are all scared of....may be even the birds have the same feeling

P. Venugopal said...

take an unsentimental look at it, Kalapana. i found peace in the eyes of the one on the ground in the midst of the emotional upheaval all around. :)

Prabhakar said...

Fine poem. Death in black and white.

P. Venugopal said...

not death alone, prabhakar. the peace and the blanketing warmth of it all, the real thing that has broken out of the fretful cawing all around. from noise to silence.

by the way, the broken-winged crow in this piece is not dead, merely injured. have you noticed how even an injury makes the crow a peaceful bird. suddenly all insecurity is gone. it is as though englightenment had dawned on it.

Kalpana Bindu said...

I believe discussions like these are very important. These give us a lot of insights.

I tried looking at it from a different perspective and my view changed. Nive Venuji.

kochuthresiamma p .j said...

bob dylan's blowing in the wind comes to my mind.
How many seas must the white dove sail
before she sleeps in the sand?

Prabhakar said...

You mean when you stop looking for security (psychological) you are totally free in the JKian sense.

P. Venugopal said...

i was just now reading 'blowing in the wind.' how beautiful it is! there is pain too in it, the pain that compassion brings...my piece is a dead log of wood on the ground while dylan's poem soars and flies.

there is no sentiment here. just the other day on the highway i saw an accident, very close to a bar i go. we are very ordinary people who come there: autorikshaw drivers, fishermen, headload workers and a journalist, sometimes two.

the man on the road with both his legs crushed and gone was a man i knew. we haven't ever exchanged a word, but he would politely make room for me at the bar counter and smile and i would smile back. i have noticed he takes a quarter-bottle cheap rum with plain water, in just two heavy takes. he then takes a dab of pickles with his finger from the common plate on the counter and licks it. he lights a cigarrette, quietly smokes it all the way down to the butt and leaves. the routine is the same each day i meet him. sometimes he would bend his head in my direction when he leaves and some other times he would be preoccupied with thoughts and would not look in my direction.

his bycyle was lying in the middle of the road crushed. a big truck was parked to the side. there were many people around the man on the road, appalled by the horrible sight. his eyes were open and he was watching everything. he seemed to recognise me. he seemed apologetic that he had created such a mess. otherwise he was calm. all the worries i had seen on his face at the bar counter were gone. and he seemed very comfortable sinking.