Permanence

Sparks fly into the night.
Stars glimmering forever.
Which is eternal?
Which is temporal?

Knowledge

Without an eye, without an ear,
without any sense to sense at all,
the tree knows...
morning it is; night that is;
summer has come; monsoon is late;
flower I must; fruit now yield.

What shall you find
with blind eyes and deaf ears
O' all knowing man?

Home?

Forever have I collected pebbles on the shores of the restless river.
When it is dusk and there is a call from home,
do I run to the village
or to the water?

A Tamil Kannadiga

Every day I thank you Mother
for I'm Tamil;
kin to Barathi and Kamban.

And yet now every day
I curse you Mother
because Akka is not my sister
nor is she my Devi.

Oh mother Cauvery
You flow through the lands
Of Tamil and Kannada.
Why then am I
the son of just one land?

Bastard

I wish my mother had been a whore
and slept with men of all lands,

so that I might have drunk the nectar
of Basavanna, of Tagore, of Basho
of Kalidasa, of Victor Hugo
of all the poets
from their own hands

instead of going about
with the begging bowl
of my unsullied birth.