Part III: Reflective
What is the entirety of the whole, mighty world, when we remove the ‘self’ from the equation? For many, this might get meaningless then. Yet for a chosen few, the self is but a passive component of life, and they realize it rightly, that even without our brief existence, the vast multitude of nature would continue to exist. Because existence was, is and will be, with or without us. From the depths of love, let us venture even further into the unseen lands of philosophy, where everything, even our very existence, is questioned. Beyond the duality of nature, beyond the dual existence of souls as lovers, we turn again, to see the real unity of life with nature, life itself as a manifestation of nature.
Come, my dear reader, let us enter these lands together, where nothing is as it seems, where everything is a symbol of something deeper, where we discover our very self.
I. Deep into the woods
We often trust something or someone, only to find out that we might have been wrong to have done so. After following a path for many, many years, one might come across a dead end, nowhere to return. Is this but the result of randomness of life, or just a consequence of the choices we make?
Deep into the woods
I followed you gleefully, through life’s puzzling maze,
That took me into the woods, at the end of days,
This solitary path that promised respite from pain,
Where nothing is to be lost, nothing is to gain.
Wait! Why? Why do you hide from me?
Alone, I fear every shadow that I see,
All around me, I see not a wisp of hope,
Seeing a snake in every tangle and rope.
Wait! Where did you go, away from my sight?
Why leave me in those woods devoid of light?
Don’t go, I plead you, appear from my dreams,
Into this misty forest, rained by moon-beams.
Where are you? Don’t leave me alone,
Into the heart of these woods forlorn,
Sad lights of gloom and shadows corner me,
Far away from the path of my destiny.
I chased you, like a child chases a bird,
Along lonely paths, unseen and unheard,
Were you a dream, no reality but lie,
To decoy me into woods, and leave me to die?
Leave me not here, not now like this,
In this shadowy realm, this dark abyss,
Don’t vanish away from my weak gaze,
At the end, as I lose my track in haze.
II. The woods of life
Some people see life as a maze, a giant puzzle to solve, a sort of a giant labyrinth. It sometimes appears to me that they might be right, because life is a long journey tangled with challenges, and yet it never ceases to allure us with its promise of rewards. What’s your opinion, dear reader?
The woods of life
Once I walked into the woods of life,
Following the footprints of many others
Allured by the honey and the fruits
My way shone by the shinning stars.
Now that I am deep in the woods,
I have lost tracks, to the way out,
Surrounded by alien trees all around
None can hear my scream, my shout.
That what allured my frozen soul,
The warmth of the woods, the fruits and their taste
Now seem nowhere, only mirages of joy
Appear before me, and vanish in haste.
The same stars shine in the leafy sky
But Alas! Their light is way too faint,
To show me my way out of this maze,
To deliver my legs the necessary strength
To walk out free, towards the source of joy
To the realm of bliss, beyond the farthest tree
Of these dark woods of so-called life
The same life dark, devoid of glee...
III. The song of emptiness
This is a question we often ask ourselves, is there really anything beyond death? Is the a second life? Or is death the end of everything, to everything, for everything? A question left unanswered, we all can have our own interpretations of what is the reality veiled by death.
The song of emptiness
Blood of memories strains time’s sand,
And tunes of void sweep the old land,
In this loneliness now I stand
With none else to lend me his hand.
A silence uncanny covers the dusky sky,
No voice to shatter it, I hear my own sigh,
But a tune blows from it, like a cry
From depths of silence, is it a mirage, a lie?
I did not read my way ahead,
I saw not life’s gloomy bed,
Memories of joy now forever fade
Into darkness, into a realm dead.
This uncanny feeling, more real than dream,
Yet seemingly false it once did seem
Once the same clouds with a divine beam
Covered the meadows, with joy’s gleam.
Now I stand atop the same plain
Only my last feelings to drain
No loss I felt, nothing did I gain
From this journey of unceasing pain
Sorrows of my life I have faced,
They disguised as joy, blissfully dressed,
Yet stabbed my heart while I embraced
The vial of Hemlock, time silently gazed...
Poems of love and tunes of faith,
Vanish into void, beyond shadowy Lethe,
My own past torments me like a wraith,
As I cross death, life’s last gate...
IV. The moments spent alone
Loneliness is a major component of ours lives, and some of us really feel strangely about it. Alone, we seem to be more meditative, reflecting on our past and present alike, recognizing ourselves more closely, knowing who or what we really are. This gives us the ability to explore ourselves.
The moments spent alone
The trembling water, thee rippling waves,
The softly surging wind carying away the leaves,
The occasional splashes of faintly falling rain,
And moments alone, to be shared with none...
The distant echo of a bird’s shrill cry,
Or the misty light, under a cloudy heaven,
With none to stand by, none but some thoughts
And memories and glimpses of promises lost...
A hovering twilight follows a cloudy day,
Reflected in a mind, cloudy and still,
A sigh, of sorrow, for promises of love,
And kept not, cuts its way like a blade
Through the heavy air and foggy mist,
The fragments of air, the pieces of a heart
Some outside, some deep inside my thoughts,
Only to be forgotten, unheard and doomed.
V. Lost dreams
When we remain young, we seem to see nature in a different way, away from the complexity that dwells everywhere in nature. We imagine things which really aren’t, we hear songs of uncanny origins and see fairies and elves. A child doesn’t know the laws of physics or the complicated systems of biology explaining nature, but yet he or she remains genuinely happy. This is the power of dreams, the dreams of a young age.
Lost dreams...
When I was young,
The earth was full of wonders and peace,
True were the fairies, the forest pixies,
And the legends and tales, of ancient Greece...
When I was young,
The morning was full of songs of birds,
My dreams went beyond the cattle herds
Beyond forests and hills, beyond thoughts and words...
When I was young,
I did not know my way around,
Nor the vast oceans, the sky profound,
Yet i
n joy my soul seemed drowned...
Now that I have grown,
The world seems no longer my own,
In every place, in every land Sun-shone,
Everywhere I roam, I feel forever alone...
VI. Darkness
The noble radiance of light, how glorious it is, ends at some point of time. Both in real life and in philosophy, we see that the void that is left behind after the end of light is darkness, the unknown, unknowable reality that underlies nature and truth itself. What is darkness? The mere absence of light, or something greater? An alternate face of reality? We may never know, but there’s no harm in exploring her in a poetic sence, right?
Darkness
Inevitably, she rises,
From somewhere below the horizon,
Her wings strehced all around
Over the distant shores of some frozen sea,
Over the sands of a deserted desert,
Over the highest tree of some lonely wood,
Everywhere she dwells...
Invincibly, she consumes,
Every sparkle of light all around,
Her blackness covering everything
Below the shade of a gloomy tree,
Below the cover of the dark sky,
Below the waves of the saline ocean,
She follows every beam of light...
Incredibly, she freezes,
The balance netween time and space,
The frozen, trembling seconds
Lose the certainty of laws unbroken,
Lose the predictibity of events,
Lose the trace of space itself,
As in her unknown way, she descends...
VII. The land beyond
What exactly is there after death? An abyssal nothingness, or something even more radiant, more rewarding than life itself? Is life everything that we have, or is there really a soul, an afterlife and some higher spiritual consciousness? We may never know the answer, but this is one last stop where philosophy merges into the realm of belief, a beautiful world where more important than reason is the power to believe. Before we enter that world, this is our last stop here...
The land beyond
Beyond the meadows and hills and trees,
Beyond the valleys of smiles and dreams,
There lies a land shrouded with mystries,
Beyond the reach of Sun’s golden beams.
What does one meet, after death and doom?
The Elysian fields, or Valhalla’s hall?
Or yet another world, of misery and gloom,
Riddled with cycles of rise and fall?
Arrows of askings and lights of thought,
Fly into it, are consumed by the dark,
They’re lost, never back are they brought,
Uncertain we stand, if they missed their mark.
And thus is life, a journey to lands unknown,
From lands forgotten, washed away by time,
Results the harvest from deeds we’ve sown,
Alone time’s shore, life thus sublime.