Over Six Decades, A Dozen Notions Of Mine Poem by Ananta Madhavan

1. Riddle

What always seems three dimensional,
On a two-dimensional surface?
Answer: One's mirror-image.


2. Words in Usage

Words are impacted metaphors.


3. Faces in a Fog

The dragon nostrils of folk on a foggy day.


4. Art and Artifact

I saw some "found" works of art from modern technology,
Like a motor-car piston or the intricate maze at the back
Of a transistor. Such things have no aesthetic significance
Apart from their function, utility. If they have artistic merit,
It comes from the craft of the maker, not from
The modishness of the displayer.


5. Whither?

A curious way to live: to surrender one's autonomy of will
And cram the day with memos, to-do notes,
Party to party meeting, book to book,
Daily pap to daily pap. Stepping stones
In the river of unlived experience.
Towards what? Whither, O splendid human?
Nowhere, nowhere.


6. Pandora released

All the evils which flew out of Pandora's vase
Were kith and kin, as was the last, called ‘Hope'.
Falsity was their progenitor in my version of the myth.


7. Bas-relief and shadows

Bas-relief can satisfy because it hints
At the shadows and depths of the third dimension,
Indulgent to the touch, the feel,
Without impairment to
The formality and style
Of a two-dimensional pictorial view.


8. Rhythm in Nature

Seasons, planets, sun and moon have their own rhythm.
We have to find ours, each one alone.
We cannot find the prosody of water.
Shall we put a metronome to the waves of the sea?



9. Music beyond Borders

Gypsy music is a link between
Cultures of East and West. India too perhaps
Had beats of drums and bonds of strings.
Those were implicit in Flamenco and the raga ‘Bhairavi'.
I opted out of a static national culture,
But I cannot be nomadic.


10. What Utopia?


When folk complain of life and the world,
I would like them to describe their Utopia.
How will the idyllic structure work? How
Will citizens give up the possessive case,
Without reward or compulsion? Sacrifice
The little they have? Equality will ensure
There are no angels in Utopia.



11. Historians and Psychology

The historian could be a psychologist for society,
Subjecting the mythic past to scholarly scrutiny,
So that a people can come to terms with their nature
And rid themselves of both phobias and delusions.


12. Psychoanalysis has perils.


Psychoanalysis can imperil personality by the extinction
Of conflicting emotions, by erasure of the slate of the Self.

It is like a sponge cake of cream and chocolate layers,
All speared by a toothpick with a cherry at the top:
A figure of the imagination probing through experience,
Without tasting it.