Stat crux dum volvitir orbis

The thrush that sat perched on the leafless tree in winter,

The thrush that roamed the bare branches, casting out everything unnecessary with minimalistic delight,

The thrush that renounced worldly desire with monastic calm and Carthusian fervour,

Chirped loudly and longly variegated songs,

Quickly dismissive of all that is not of God.

The world turns and turns, and everywhere the sad story is one and the same,

The wait for the fulfillment of a human desire,

And the realization after the fulfillment that the heart is still restless and hungry.

Know this: what money and material possessions cannot give you, God can.

"Stat crux dum volvitir orbis."

The world revolves, while the Cross stands still.

Only God is changeless. 

Live light and simply and your death will be beautiful, my friend

And behold, Spring is nigh:

Wait till it blossoms,

And you will see God's truth, beauty and goodness

Leading you back home to heaven

Time Before and After

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always —

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

- Burnt Norton, Part 1 of Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot 

I contemplate the vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after

He is the Word, and "He existed before me".

I myself was born into this world merely a few years ago,

While He watched me awaken into consciousness of this world,

(Who knows if I had ever been conscious in heaven, 

When I was but a thought in the mind of God)

And He watched me learn about Him,

And learn to love Him.

And here at the present moment, in the twenty-first century,

I idly wonder, if after all of this, my words will have the poignant look

Of words that had never been read.

I write all these thoughts to you, O Word,

And in writing to you, you free me from that fear

Of being forgotten forever by all but you

Time moves on relentlessly in its inexorable march towards eternity:

In a hundred years I will not be around anymore

In a thousand years none of this will ever matter,

(Houses, careers, money, achievements)

Except the Word and the love we bore for Him

And our brethren

And I amidst this vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after

You walked me through the pastures green

While the world sang its illusory anthem aloud,

Christ led me by the hand

(You led me by the hand)

You walked me through the pastures green,

Among the white lilies and spotless circular roses.

In the silence, in the solitude -

When I am alone with You,

Your eyes light up everything, every everything,

You are who I need -

In the stillness, Christ quiets my searching soul -

And Christ whispered unto my heart

I will lead you by the hand

I will show you what life is

O You are all I ever need, Love

You walked me through the pastures green

You were my muse before I met You

You were my muse before I met You.

I prayed for Your visitation before I knew You.

Like a single eye watching from the setting sky,

The sun watches me - dost Thou watch me too?

Photographed sunsets nauseate me, make me seasick.

Give it to me real, give me reality, 

For I abhor the lesser beauty of reality when photographed.

I desire not the sign that points, but what it points to.

Memory of myself and not of Thee, nor for Thee.

O selfish motive of the self, dwindling in the light of the dying sun.

Words began to be more important to me, and I lost my grip on reality,

And perchance on charity as well -

Stuck at the top of this Ferris wheel of life,

I search nostalgically for the horizon which is now obstructed 

By the modern monoliths of brick and glass.

Here lies a poem written in blood and pain.

Mere jots and thoughts on life, to fill up the empty awkward silence.

Your voice and words would be more eloquent

Waves washed onto the beach in the sunset,

Washing away the sandcastles and the names written down.

All the hard sandcastling of the day,

Gone in a single wave in the evening.

Like the snowmen you, my friend, built last winter. Melting

Only true love remains, indestructible

Stargazing

In the evening we go stargazing in the mountains.

At dawn, we stare at the sun, for only the sun

Can burn your eyes.

Then open your eyes and see.

Try cloud-watching as well, and name the clouds,

And behold the majestic shapes and forms therein.

Feel the call of nature calling you,

As if from another world untainted by sin.

Renounce everything, and cling to Christ, the Son.

Then open your eyes. See

Portrait of a Quixotic Poet

Poor delusional me,

To whom all reality seems textual in nature.

The world is a word, the sun is a noun, the moon is derived from the Old English mōna.

Poor delusional me, a poet in my perception

But an absent-minded Quixote in others.

fire in our hearts

each of us was created

with fire in our hearts

and we will not find peace

until the fire explodes in light and song,

and our love for God and man is at its highest

"What is truth?"

My poetry thus far has fallen short, it seems to me.

What I should have strived for is this -

A poetry that now thirsts, now burns,

thirsts with a scorched and parched thirst,

and burns with a holy, holy desire for the truth

and nothing but the truth,

regardless of the beauty.

But here am I,

Pathetic poet stuck only at the beauty,

Creating beautiful phrases and clever images.

My poetry at times

Feels like a room shaken emptied of the philosopher

Who once lived therein.

How I yearn for you, realism and truth,

For I have had enough of unreal fantasies,

What I want is the truth.

For I would live in a lie, would live in a delusion,

I am a lie, I am delusion'd

If I refuse to seek the truth

Amidst the noise and the lights 

Of this soon fading world.

And what is truth, I ask, blind man that I am.

O tragic, pitiful irony, that I ask this to

Him who knows, him who is the answer.

He alone can unbind me, unblind me.

"What is truth?"

burning,

 burning,

  burning,

   burning

For amidst the daily shopaholism

Which I fail to perceive within myself,

I forget what I am.

I look at money and what it gets me,

I forget the truth.

How I have fallen short.

Would that I could be the poet

Who walked into the black night

With burning torch in hand,

Turning night into pure light.

If only we could see, then we could know the truth.

If only we knew, then we could do what is right.

For it is only in choosing light over dark

That we find true peace.

burning,

 burning,

  burning,

   burning,

torch in unblind poet's hand

The Dance of Celerity and Tardiness

Head down, downcast eyes,

I'm running again

(Don't notice me)

For another bus because I missed one already.

(Don't notice me)

I seem to be running late everywhere,

Running late in this journey of life as well.

Late, late, late, I do not have the luxury of time,

But carry the burden of urgency,

Constantly pushing myself through this and that,

Because I imagine myself to be running late.

And yet I feel the acute pain

Of not achieving much in my haste -

Rather I am quite slow

In my plodding from one task to another.

Thus goes the dance of celerity and tardiness.

Yet I am fast at other things, like reading - 

Distastefully fast, my friend tells me.

"You read like this and soon 

You'll skim through life much the same way."

No, I don't want that, I think, frightened out of my haste.

I want to live life to the full, relishing the friendships with God and man.

Skimming through words here and there,

Perhaps without deep ponderous reflection,

I spit out poems which I hope

Will shock the modern day man

Out of his modern day stupor.

When did I begin to write psychological

Or phemenological poems

That are confessional snapshots of my inner self?

What am I doing here

Doing metacognition instead of poetry?

But he did tell us to "Know thyself",

I justify myself for my words. 

Dear reader, absorb the philosophy and the worldview,

And spit out the unnecessary rambling words.

Until next time, good reader, until next time

I am not the sum of all my words

Words are not what I am, 

They are not the substance of my being, 

I refuse, I refuse to let them define me,

Even though I repeatedly perceive myself

As only the sum of all my written words. 

I seem to predicate my identity, 

And everything that I am, every moment, Upon those words that call me father.

Every passing moment, I seem to perceive

Myself as the potential creator of a epic, poetic 

Corpus of majestic words, 

Written on the shores of this world, 

But never washed away by the persistent waves of time, 

And only in this do I seem to find my worth, 

Which I have yet to earn. 

I perceive that I live fully only if and when I write -

Fatal thinking that strays me from the true trajectory of life, 

Which runs from moment to moment, 

From love to love, and then to God. 

Nay, in my words is not my worth, 

But in the love I bear for God and man. 

I live, in every moment, if I love. 

Mortal words fade. Only love remains on the shores, immortalised

shivering in the summer

here am I, 

said he, 

shivering in the summer, 

sheltered from the resuscitating sun 

by the deceptive leaves of fruitless trees, which was himself, though he knew it not.

allow yourself to be warmed by the sun, I cry, 

and him unheeding. 

here am I, 

said he, 

trying to recuperate from the bitter, forbidden original fruit

as dark as night 

which clutch at my feet and make me stumble.

I write poems of this man 

which is myself

and try to guide him to the land of golden light, 

where every word is a poem, 

resplendent in beauty 

only because the right word is chosen. 

in the choosing lies an eternity of genuine peace - 

finally, finally - 

lasting peace

Hope: An Ode

Reject despair. For your despair can turn rivers to

Dry dust

And all those words of hope into

But a gust

Of empty air

Hold on to hope, for it will lead you 

By the hand, finally, to the heaven you long for.

Patience, but a little patience,

And you will reach there.

Patience. Beautiful things take time

At the crest of the infinity wave

There are not enough words to say

The words that I want to say

There is not enough space in this page

To write all I that want to write

For all the words you cannot speak

May be written on the crest of the infinity wave

As it rises, rolling upwards - 

For now we trudge on along its trough.

At the crest of time and eternity,

At the turning point into timelessness,

Which here we call death,

We may perchance be able to speak

All the words we could not speak

(To describe those indescribable 

Experiences, perceptions, and realities)

Here in this vale of tears.

Wait for the curving of the road,

The crossing of the lights,

The turning point of the ever-turning wave,

(Which here we call death)

And all will then be light to you.

At the crest of the infinity wave,

Where all matter ceases to be,

And where spirit alone survives.

Till then fare well and fare safely

Afternote:

- ChatGPT was used to find the word for wander or journey in the line 

For now we trudge on along its trough.

- The line "Till then fare well and fare safely" possibly was inspired by Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

The Melancholy of Life

Ah, the melancholy of life doth

Pervade this restless heart of mine,

And move me to ponder on the beauty of reality,

Urging my flitting, fluttering mind to dwell upon God.

There we are as free from the claws of time

As this poem is free from the constraints of meter,

For He alone is the truth my thirsting soul seeks

In this quest from this passing world

To the next unchanging one

For the Love of Truth

After a certain amount of poetry,

I began to distance myself from the beauty of poetry,

And became a lover of truth instead.

Those beautiful words and phrases,

This clever choice of words,

That carefully created metaphor,

All losing their gleam, at least momentarily,

With poet burning into philosopher

I, poet, burning with a thirst for reality

I, poet, burning with desire for the truth

I, poet, burning with love for everything that is

Thee

And to Rome then I came

 burning,

  burning,

   burning,

For love of

Thee

Stillness and Motion

The worldly romance of this life leads nowhere,

Only circling back to itself,

Quenching thirst with thirst,

Mocking your insatiable heart.

The only movement that will lead you to a redemption

From the heart's tempestuous restlessness

Is neither grasping forwards in time

Nor leaning backwards,

But stillness and motion in the present moment,

Remaining in the present and moving towards God,

Seeking Him alone and what He dost will,

Where you are alive in your existence

And awake though you sleep.

Arise, arise from your slumber,

Be wakeful even before this dream's end,

So that you may rest forever when you awake,

When your only true quest from this world to the next

Has finished and begun -

And then your end shalt be your perpetual beginning

For your end is now your beginning

You and me and me and You

After the paradox of the single two,

Amidst the multiplicity of opinionated persons,

It is only You and me

And me and You,

And always will ever be.

There in You, I am alone with You,

And Your eyes and thoughts and love is

All I feel and need feel.

I only had to pay heed to 

What You thought of me.

If only I had known.

For after the delusion of satisfaction, sufficiency and illusory final arrivals, 

I had met Thee, 

And had found peace in all its immensity

Closer and closer I walk to You

I wake, a mere babe, seeing the world for the first time,

Loving You for the first time.

Growing older I get to know You more,

How You came to visit me in my exile

In this valley of tears,

And what You did for me.

I see You now and then,

In the little, holy bread.

Ageing, I mature in love for You.

Not necessarily becoming more perfect

But becoming more perceptive of my imperfections.

Older and older I grow,

Closer and closer I walk to You,

I want to love you more and more

But You know how changing I am 

Even before Your unchanging love -

Help me, I ask You, grow in love for You,

For You are all I need and want,

In this exile of mine in this valley of tears,

Lord Jesus Christ

The Burning of the Poems

In the mornings I wake up,

Head over to the mountains,

And with the fire of the rising sun,

I burn all my poems,

To embers and ashes.

In the mornings, in the mountains, in the sunrises,

I renounce all, relinquish all,

Free at last (ideally), I desire nothing save Thee.

I thirst, I burn for Thee, O Lord my God

I need nothing, but Thee.

What is air and what is water

When Thy eyes have turned to me, a lost wanderer

In this valley of tears.

The spilt breath of spoken words, and

The spilt ink of written words are

For Thee and for Thee only.

I do not know if this is poetry,

But it is for Thee.

What have I which is not Thine.

My heart explodes with a multitude of desires,

To do this, and do that,

To achieve this, and achieve that,

To scale Everest,

Conquer the world,

Be the first, the best, the greatest.

Be still, Thou whispereth unto my heart.

Thou hast redeemed me from my aching heart of insatiable desires.

Before I fade away to dust and ashes

Into the unrelenting hands of Father Time,

Who with death, levels all, both rich and poor, as equals,

Redeem me that I may transcend 

This worldly heart of mine,

And love Thee with every fibre of my being.

I thirst, I burn for Thee, O Lord my God

Bitter Poetry: or The Artsickness for Heaven

Let me tell you a story

Or a poem. It does not matter.

(The poetry do not matter.)

This is the poet's story, not just mine.

 

"So what's the plan," I asked my good friend.

"Get this new job,

And be amazing in it," he said.

"Wonderful. And then?"

"Earn enough money to buy a house and whatever I want."

"Even better. And then?"

He shrugged, confused.

"Has it ever occurred to you," I asked,

"That the subsequent chain of what nexts

Finally break and leave you hanging?

Has it ever crossed your mind

That finally you could be there face to face with God,

Which could be your permanent present and secure future?"

Parenthesis:

[Meanwhile in real life,

I spell out these my wanderings

Of my imagination,

Letter by letter.

In love with words as I am,

I type out letter by ponderous letter,

Though I know not if these words love me -

What are they, what are they, these words

That are dams to the reservoirs of meaning 

That hide behind them -

What are you, what are you, you words?

I remember the wandering philosopher,

Wandering because he wanders still in my mind

In the quiet solitary moments,

With a myriad of other philosophers

Or philosophies

Or philosophical questions or quests of

Why, why, why -

The oceans of meaning. Not my idea but another's -

For what have I thought up originally, 

O what have I achieved? So runs my haphazard poetic streak zig-zag

These were words that once had meanings

Here once dwelt a poem, now a tattered, shredded bunch of words.

Or here lies a poem, which once was a living, breathing idea

In the poet's mind before he wrote it down.

Halt! For this one poem, I write the words, and you sing the song.

I play the tune, and you dance to it.

I state the terms, and you listen to me. 

(Although when I grow up

I want to be an ear, a walking ear, 

Who listens to every pain of every person,

And consoles.

When I grow up I want to be an ear.)

I look back at the last paragraph

Of my life as an obscure, wandering poet,

And am surprised by the haphazard lines and letters,

Perhaps impoverished in meaning,

Perhaps not. I enjoy it though.

And despite what we are, zig-zag, zig-zag

O how beautifully God does draw with the crookedest lines!

We each are a masterpiece, 

Wrought by His hands, if but we say fiat.

Like a sudden flood of sunlight

Through the green leaves of roadside trees,

Your smile and your eyes utterly blind me.

If you read these carefully worded and lettered lines,

These words so lovingly handwoven and crafted,

When I was alone in myself,

Writ in ponderous, frantic deliberation

(True Beauty was my muse) -

Would you listen to it or burn it in fire,

Casting it to the roses fading 

Amidst hot embers and ashes?

Would you deem it worthy of time's test,

Tell me it was worth it all,

Or laugh it away with a dismissive wave of your hand?

I have gone through the pages of my poetry,

Page by page, and found them intolerable.

I have measured my poems, word by word,

And found them devoid of beauty.

I have been weighed and found wanting.

Have I been blinded by so beautiful a muse?

Perhaps it is time for me to write the greater poem

Of a beautiful life, with the ink of each passing day lived for God.

Sometimes I suspect I write for immortality,

Or for passing fame, and not for Thee.

I whisper my poems to myself, obsessively

I read it again and again, hysterically,

And find not peace, save in Thee.

Oh, I feel the melancholic sickness again within myself,

The artsickness for heaven -

I am homesick for the beauty of heaven,

My true homeland -

And home is where Thou art, my Lord, my God.

Now back to the poetry.]

My friend looks at me, disconcerted, disoriented, unpeaced.

He stares at me intently,

I, quixotic, dreamy, absent-minded poet.

"Sometimes even being with you

Is bitter poetry," he says, but smiles.

In the evenings I try to change and save the world from my armchair

In the evenings I try to change and save the world 

    From my armchair. 

I call up a random bloke and tell him 

    That he's a likeable person, and that 

        The world needs him and wants him - something he's never been told. 

He is surprised 

    And does not know how to react, 

But I can see that he is grateful. 

    His voice falters (thinking to himself, "So it is not Every man for himself, after all") 

        As he says thank you 

This is not exactly who I am, 

    But who I want to be, telling people that they are worth it all.

By the evening of this journey to the next world, 

    As we walk 

        Heavenwards, encouraging each other forwards

In the evenings I try to change and save the world 

    From my armchair. 

At times, 

    The littlest things 

        Are the most glorious