Symbol Forests Poem by Ananta Madhavan

"A man wends his way through forests of symbols
Which look at him with their familiar glances"
Charles Baudelaire, sonnet entitled ‘Correspondances'.
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Choosing words to say what I want to say
Without re-treading beaten paths, unafraid
To lose my imagined destination; that would suffice
To pass my voiding mood of blank ineptitude.

Even to find afresh a bare branch stretched out
To reach a warmer waft, a seasonal bud to defy
The angles of a land too harsh to till or reclaim.

Maybe all the best thoughts have been inscribed
Imperishably in stone and cyber-memory,
But I must venture forth, onward, forward or even
In spirals widening out beyond space and time.

Let metaphors go the way of similes. I make my way.
Why should I care,
If others do not dare
To travel this way?

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February,2015