Our Ignorance Poem by Madathil Rajendran Nair
Our Ignorance
We wept, we prayed, we stood vigil
Pressed our heads against the grilled hospital gate
Hoping some movement inside
Would signal positive tidings
We called in the police
Lest something untoward happened
As fools discussed the money at stake
And your corporeal body lay inside
Breathing its last
Supported by ventilators
And intravenous stimulators
Baba, I had laughed at you
When you visited my village
In my young days
I dubbed your acts
Magical pranks
I was then atheistic
And morbidly rationalistic
Not knowing what
Being either really did mean
I could but only do
What every other rascal did
I grew up enough
Perhaps wise enough
To admit that the world
Couldn’t exist at all
In the first place
Sans some intelligence
Which knew it
And homed in it
Like itself
No matter what name
We called it by
I could then resonate
With what you said
Yet doubts remained
But I could at least
Remain neutral and avoid
Being foolishly judgmental
Like the erstwhile young scoundrel
Now you have flown away
All things born have to fade away
The play of the last so many days
Has come to an end
Giving our ignorance a field day
Of speculation why
A saint was embodied
Suffered mortal tragedies
Disease, doctors, gadgets
And what not
A whole world of medicine
Every-hour bulletins
A frail failing body amidst
In the throes of entropy
That our blind eyes
Had for years
Sought for darshan
Not knowing what lay behind
We wept and wailed
Prayed for a miracle in vain
Refusing to open our eyes
To the truth of our being
That you are
For we always relished
Being mundane
Fastidiously inane
Accustomed to embodied gods
That strode our roads
Rubbing shoulders with us
No matter how much
You and others strived
Now, Alas! There is talk
Of a resurrection, reincarnation
Your promised return
To the darkness of our ignorance
To enact another play
For us to foolishly devour
With eyes that are blind
To the light that lights the stage
Groping in daylight is our incurable wont
Our backs eternally turned to the sun
Peace, Peace, Peace
Here I differ.... differ respectfully! You may include me among the scoundrels....but I am grown enough to admit that the world cannot exist sans some Supreme Intelligence! Man is so helpless...! !
Now, Alas! There is talk Of a resurrection, reincarnation Your promised return To the darkness of our ignorance To enact another play For us to foolishly devour With eyes that are blind To the light that lights the stage......fantastic imagination. A beautiful poem. Excellent collocation. Many thanks.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/18/2024 10:09:32 PM # 1.0.0.1119
I like this tribute to your mentor because it describes how you were thrown back upon your own resources by his death, which is exactly what he would have hoped. Your language always sparkles, such as when you describe yourself as /morbidly rationalistic/ when he first came to your village. MORBID indeed, because rationality too often KILLS our ability to identify with the great intelligence that is required for the world to exist. Presumably you got past that /erstwhile scoundrel/ stage, and looking back it was the instructive example of people like him that helped to open your eyes. Now your screen of consciousness registers the responses of self and others to the whole death process. You witness and feel the limited, grasping responses, but you can also adopt a perspective not bound to surface forms. This is a good way of paying tribute to what your mentor represented.