SECRETS OF THE SOUL 4 - CAULDRON

Secrets of the Soul 4 - Cauldron

I seek the secrets of the soul,

That once touched and stirred

The cauldron deep within the burrows,

Of an inconsequential existence,

To be pulled out and made to stand

The allure of an everlasting passion,

To be consumed in the fire of her embrace,

To wither away and crumple down,

Amongst the ruins, amidst the great walls,

That once stood guard against the hordes

Of intruding marauders and scavengers,

Now, only the ghost remains, a witness.

For those of my friends who have not read the first three poems of 'SECRETS OF THE SOUL' I am reproducing them below -

In ‘Secrets of the Soul’ my inner world of dreams and awareness mingle with the happenings in the external world of things and events in a bid to correlate and seek answers to the turmoil going on within the self. It took me a long time to write down my thoughts, in bits and pieces, and it has been one long journey, but the secrets that I seek to understand never really end, that is why this will remain an incomplete exploration.

These are a set of seventeen poems or you may call them stanzas if you will. The only structure that I have adhered to is that each of them consists of twelve lines. They depict a snapshot of my own emotions and experiences and the resultant imagery. I attempt to tell a story and leave it to the readers to interpret and correlate with their own.

Gulmohars

I seek the secrets of the soul,

That speak of dampened pavements,

Drenched by the teardrops of the moon,

The touch of cool fingers,

Tracing patterns on the ridges

Of my scarred face and aquiline nose,

As the gulmohars lay strewn across,

Last night’s relentless fury had abated.

But the scars stayed waiting,

For another day, another night,

To open up those festering wounds,

To revel and roll in the mud again.

Song of the Wind

I seek the secrets of the soul,

That sang the song of the wind

As it blew its way through the holes                                                    

In the bamboo shoots, whistling,

Sometimes moaning, a soulful tune,

And the wayfarer stops to listen and search

For the melancholic maiden

Among the gently swaying tall grass,

You drift away with the wind,

An apparition, a distant dream,

Beckoning me to your folds,

As I stand enraptured and alone.

Shadows

I seek the secrets of the soul,

That beat the drums of destiny,

The shadows that shrivel and stretch,

Shiver as they dance around

The dying embers of the fading years,

As they turn to ashes and the dust,

They disappear as the darkness descends,

Leaving only the footprints,

To be blown away to oblivion,

And beyond to a another world,

Another day, another night, once again.

Only the ghost remains unbound and free.