Relay – Watching the Breath

The last poem from S D Anugyan’s poetry book, Here Are The Empire Builders!

Finally, something about Shiva’s instruction to Parvati, of the ‘relay’ of watching between the in-breath and the out ‘whilst in the world’, provides a transcendence.

The Empire, frustrated by its ultimate impotence while ‘the unthought blooms’, lashes out.

The president
And all his street-gang
Assassinated a piece of poetry.

This was directly evoked by the arrest of Osho in America.

But from the perspective of the Seeker it doesn’t matter now. All our characters and eras have come together to celebrate:

The train is on time.
Rebel dance! The entire platform roars
As you collect your case and go, as if
On holiday. No-one understands.

It doesn’t matter that no-one understands, it doesn’t make sense anyhow. So don’t try!

An orchid
Bold and rare
Unseen, impossible

Everything has led to this moment.

Glimpses fusing Time; an open door
And a pancake burnt.
There’s no-one here.
There is no longer even a Seeker.

Relay – Watching the Breath

Beloved – the Beneficence!

– Shiva to Parvati

I embrace the depths of Science
But what is the Face hidden from mine?
Robot lynx-eyes. Penetrate cruel dawn.
Rain coming down in buckets at the entrance
Of an aged, dilapidated mine
Dishevelled in the earth. Fashioned by sense.

Chaos is the limit. Because
No-one would touch his hand, because
Girls, trumpets, swing and
The unthought blooms,
The president
And all his street-gang
Assassinated a piece of poetry.

The train is on time.
Rebel dance! The entire platform roars
As you collect your case and go, as if
On holiday. No-one understands.

Here blades
Words, things
Ornaments divine.
Carnal defenses.

Collapse like rocks.
The scorpion smiles.
Heart-talk,
Hair blows wildly.
Have a cup of tea,
Inform me
In the coldness of Thursday
That something exists:
Naked, pitiless stalk,
An orchid
Bold and rare
Unseen, impossible
Clinging, holding mere voices of the air.
Perfume, erase.
Howling vacant house
Shrieking, clambering sea-air
Radio-hysteric, tigers stroking senses.

Pick up the sun!
You found when walking through the ruins.
Nobody was hurt
When the emperor’s sole box-plane
Burst into
Grew pregnant with fire-stars aflame.
The trick is: clowns playing together.
Close your eyes and it is the same.

Disco-lightning on marble shores,
Blue wire to red, salt-stranded hair
Blows out of sense, beloved visitor,
Glimpses fusing Time an open door
And a pancake burnt.

There’s no-one here.