The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous,
licentious, abominable, infernal; why should they be?
No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
Yet I found your obituary notice therein & thought:
a man worthy of praise the Muse forbids to die.
We see stars appear as the sky is clad in darkness;
‘a mugging Jew among the wolves, ' yet you shone
like a star to illuminate your allotted dark patch.
Now that's burnt out like a candle that gave light
to shine beyond the mouthhole of a dark abyss.
It's quietude through whose veins we reach you;
yet it's speech through which a recluse gets purified,
the recluse ignored ‘streams of common pa**ion, '
admitted ‘illusions cast into the mindless streams.'
You chose to shine up to ‘the company of spiders.'
You sought ‘a humane balance humanly acquired'
and never wanted to be ‘isolated in Man's defeat'
and unlike yogis saw things as they are, it's a habit,
and lighted the cold abyss of darkness with care
and formulated that the wise cash in on storms.
In silence ‘churning the springs of unborn songs'
and feeling ‘the wind' in whose heart fire did rest,
you waited for words like ‘the best poets' or lovers,
busy tracking meanings out of mirages & illusions.
It seems we buy knowledge with our placidness.
You denied hollowness sheared of any esotericism,
watched out for balloons bulging to burst out into air.
All the inner and the outer storms had shattered you,
unlike idlers you rebuilt the castle of your heart;
no matter how the charms of anxiety plagued you.
Perhaps your place whose view seared your eyes,
will mourn you till the world's end; your doing
‘something for India' is a good show of gratitude.
Wolves may celebrate your demise with Lights Out!
We ‘rascals' keep lighting candles in your honour.