Eight Small Poems Poem by Ananta Madhavan

1.

Go, gentle bird,
I am your friend, although you doubt it.
I scorn to bribe you with my crumbs:
That would corrupt our tentative friendship.


2.

Space is a cosmic waste-basket
To which, maybe, the Maker has consigned
Abortions like the earth.


3. An Over-sensitive Man

"If I am skinned you might see
Nerve-ends like burnt mushrooms,
Calloused, each one a poem.
I cannot feel any more".


4. The Taoist

A man in search of Tao
Saw this dilemma:
"If I would have Tao,
I should not seek Tao.
If to have Tao,
I don't seek Tao,
I shan't have Tao."


5.

I will meet you half-way, said my eyes.
Yours said nothing.


6.

What is the world going to do
To stop me in my trance,
Where the world is whirled in a jig
And I am not involved?


7.

The frankly grey and the frankly bald
Half-pity those who dye their hair or hairs
Or cover their shiny tops with wigs.


8.

The Etiquette of Words defeats me.
Art is a distortion of between-spaces
Wherein we live. The modern poet tries
To locate the bearings of those between-spaces, but
To define is to desecrate;
Leaf shadows flicker on the sunlit road ahead.


- - - - (1966-80)