Untimely Death
“I’ve always quite liked the image of me with a sickle and cape.
Dark and formidable.
Unfortunately, I’m far more ordinary and commonplace…”
From the film ‘Book Thief’
Sometimes a leaf falls to death from a tree aged
And withered to complete brown;
Or young but diseased and dying with yellow splotches
Or plucked off a branch at random by the indiscriminate hands of the wind
Or still a bud nipped between two callous nails.
Or in ever so many other ways, it just falls to death.
Shakespeare was but half-right when he wrote
“…I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death.
The weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground…”
He’s a lettered man and wise, no doubt, but it was still a half-truth;
For it just is not only the tainted wether of the flock
Or the weakest kind fruit that’s ripest for death
Whose stark choices first bewilder and then baffle us
Every so often;
It seems that the Grim Reaper keeps no calendar or map;
Nor does he (or could that be she for its women, more than men,
Who’re seen reaping in the farmlands?) wear any watch.
Perhaps, he or she keeps their own schedule and map
And scaling the tallest walls
Penetrating the toughest halls
Comes in without knocking
Invisible but still so resolute as the wind
And abducts our soul into another realm,
Another dimension of life,
Hidden like the wind from the human eyes,
And far beyond the reach of any human hands
But felt all the more real, nonetheless, for that
At her seventh day ‘mathaka ban’a
About my beloved friend snuffed out by Covid -19
Before she turned thirty
With her seven months’ old dream too, dead in her womb
The young monk emphasised more than once:
“There’s no such thing as an untimely death.”
What’s untimely death but an empty phrase
Rooted in our crass ignorance.
We shake our fists at death
In our ignorant moral fury
Blind to the reality
Blind to Mother Nature’s order of creation
And destruction
And blind to the impermanence,
The ultimate truth of this infinite universe.
The truth can console
But not enough.
Words - Jayashantha Jayawardhana
****
Bluebird
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see you.
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out But I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
You want to screw up the
works?
You want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
But I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
Then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there,
I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
And it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
Words - Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was one of the most famous of the American poets of his time. He was first published in his 20s., but gave up serious writing for the world of work and bars. He spent a lot of time roaming from job to job living in rooming houses from the East coast to the West coast before joining the United States Postal Service in Los Angeles.
His life at that time bordered on insanity and death, two prevalent themes in his writing.
****
Timed out
Can you hear me?
Come on
Can you hear me?
What did you say?
Okay, let’s proceed
But I can’t see you
Wait till I switch on mine
He too wanna join
Okay, one, two, three,
Four, five --- --- twenty three
Six missing
Where’ve they been?
No idea. May be
On the bund
What the hell they do
There?
Can we proceed?
I can’t hear you again
Where’s the link
Check it out
When can I begin?
Ok. Fifth lesson
Nope, one activity
Remaining
Are you nuts?
It’s homework
Nope homework
wasn’t given
Stop. Me gonna start
The lesson
Should we take the textbook
What the hell you asking?
See, 20 minutes remaining.
Time-wasting. Come on.
Let’s begin.
Hey!! Stop jabbering
How many continents
We can’t here you
Which page, which activity
Have you begun?
27 out of 43
Poor attendance
A stranger has joined
Chase the man off
Hellish. Hellish. Hellish.
Wish could die
Neither me nor they can hear
Timed out
Words - Saumya Aloysius
(Based on the personal experience of an online teacher)