Ananta Madhavan Poems

Maps are true to place and scale,
Cameras to outer form;
Paintings tell a purblind truth,
But poems lie.
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I

Wait and catch a rhythm,
Catch it as it falls
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1. When the thwarted ego turns
Inward for strength,
'Injustice' is its cry.
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Like a great man seen in person
The bull is diminished inside a showcase.
The ‘seal’, no bigger than a postage stamp,
Marks out the many dewlaps and the muscles.
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Birds at dormitory gossip,
Where the rhododendrons blaze
Many-coloured as the slacks
Under the slanting sun.
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After the rain the leaves let fall
A few explicit drops;
The sodden turf is firming up again.
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Words are like chessmen.
Each has a field of force,
Inter-fusing, inter-gripping.
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Leave me a whisper in the wind
Or a fragrance from your tresses,
Some fugitive signature of love
To trap within my splintered mind.
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Fleet was our transit through the day,
The traction smooth in ebb and sway -
The passing scene was passing gay.
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Ashrafi the tigress
So beautifully bored
Suffered her cubs to tug at her teats
And clouted the rolling one.
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