Let Us Interpret Our Own Life-World Poem by Ananta Madhavan

We inherited a world we have not made.
It is, as poet Rainer Maria Rilke said,
‘An interpreted world', where we do not feel
Much at home, as even animals have noticed.

Why so? Is it because everything we see, touch and know,
All have names, compounded by syntax, native idiom, context.
They tend to intrude in our habits of seeking fantasy.
We link our trove of words, which are but given names,
With symbols and similitudes which play us false to what is real;
That is the hazard of alternate realities.
A gentle breeze is playing on a frond of a palm tree,
Whose shafted leaves ripple
Like rapid fingers on piano keys,
Or slide down chromatic veena strings.

Such fancy makes music for undiscovered spheres,
Beyond our life-world and its intent or meaning
For each of us, the surest interpreter
Of the world we want to recreate.