Poetry

By

K.S. Subramanian

Eyeing Mars

News: 100000 people in US have applied for a trip to Mars years later and do not wish to return.

Has the eye seen the last threshold of life

shirking from a glance at the void beyond?

The void a throwback to the valley of chaos

before the Big Bang?

Or the smell of life born out of it spreading

Into an aroma of beauty that still

beams light into awe-struck eyes?

Myriad vistas of sculptural motifs  –

Palace of Versailles, the gardens of Babylon,

the Qutab Minar,  pyramidal symmetry,

radiant Taj – and many more spinning a saga of

astounding brain work and deft craft.

Have they lost out on the eye?

Is the mind emptied out of the search

….. almost busted by the nauseating

reality of perceived nothingness?

Is earth that flew out of the Bang

caught in the web of climate disorder,

stock busts, cultural atrophy?

Come Red Star! Let the fatigued eye

scan your fiery empty plains;

And put up a makeshift shanty

to rest the limbs; then take a deep

breath to look for a green horizon.

Fame a scar on name

‘Work is its own reward’ – so spoke

scions in the eons of time;

Some made a name, others took

anonymity as no scar on their plume.

Fame perhaps a curse on name,

its scars leaving a dull pain,

the world deaf to your cries

heckling at hopes in your domain.

But the scions stuck to their edifice,

a gut feeling with seeds of life;

All sneer and scorn midwife of a

dying order, emitting its last sighs.

Knowing a trapdoor to anguish.

Can it keep the doer on a leash?

K.S. Subramanian

K.S.Subramanian, India has published two volumes of poetry titled ‘Ragpickers’ and ‘Treading on Gnarled Sand’ through the Writers Workshop, Kolkata, India.  His poems have appeared in Asian Age, a daily published from New Delhi and other centres. Also in magazines, anthologies and web sites such as thebrowncritiqueblogspot.com, www.yorickmagazine.com, poetrymagazine.com, poetrypacific, Kingston writers creative Blog, museindia.com, vigilpub. Café dissensus, unesco.it among others. He is a retired Senior Asst. Editor from The Hindu, one of the leading dailies in India. Preparing to bring out his third volume of poems soon.