Player

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Player

Poem

A game board setup is mine each day,
To all the configured pieces I do wake,
Noting and remembering the moves to make
To manoeuvre myself from error’s way.

But the game seems rigged, all pieces
Within and without owned not by me,
Am but lent a form to breathe temporarily
But such are the ways of the grace.

Often the game seems a familiar face,
I wonder if I have seen it way before
Or perhaps it is a memory of some lore
Reaped from the history of human race.

Mine feet on streets with paltry stride
Descended it from a mighty ancestor?
Trod these the bloodied Trojan shore
Or stood watching Kurukshetra’s ruinous pride?

These feeble arms and scribing fingers
Shaped after some glorious hero scion
From the legendary dynasty of the moon,
But now spent of valour so woefully falters?

This mind lit by a minor wick’s flame
Once pondered over the distant borders
Of heaven alongside the ancient fathers,
Who discovered heart-flame, Agni by name?

This heart of wild vacillating passions
Once beat unmoved over battle’s carnage,
A grand feast for Death at end of an age
Presaging the convulsions and coming ruins?

This will so faint and hidden in thought
And desire, once stood luminous and imperial
Lording over nature from its realm ethereal,
Ever in commune with the drift of God?

With all mine parts I play the pieces
Of this world game conceived formidably,
Through it my chequered ascent inevitably
To the abode of the Player and His offices.

Om to all the Dawns that led us here|
Om to all the Nights that led us here|
Om to all the Nights that lead us there|
Om to all the Dawns that lead us there|
Obeisance, Obeisance, Obeisance||