THE ENCHANTING VERSES INTERNATIONAL poetry journal

                                                                                                                               ISSN-0974-3057
                                         
The Enchanting Verses

International Presents


ISSUE -VI  MAY 2009

    ALL SELECTED POETS AND POEMS       

"Poetry
makes nothing happen.
It survives
in the valley of its saying."

[Maxine Kumin (b. 1925), U.S. poet. "Lines Written in the Library of Congress After the Cleanth Brooks Lecture," lines 224-227. "Poetry/makes nothing happen" are, as Kumin acknowledged, lines borrowed from W. H. Auden's (1907-1973) poem, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."]


"The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions."
[Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 1, p. 93, Houghton Mifflin (1906).]


"What raises great poetry above all else—it is the entire person and also the entire world."
[Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), Austrian author. Also: commemorative sheet for Friedrich von Reden and Wilhelm von Wartenegg. Album entry, Poems (1862).]

 
From the Desk of The Managing Editor

 

It is indeed a great pleasure to see The Enchanting Verses International successfully completing one year featuring both eminent and upcoming poets from all over the globe.We have introduced awards and competitions and have tried our level best to bring out a different taste of poetry through the past issues.It is really worth mentioning that the response from the very beginning has been tremendous and at the same time encouraging.I am happy to inform all readers and contributors that The Enchanting Verses International from now onwards will be a multilingual journal featuring poems and translations in various languages.I take the opportunity to congratulate all the award winners and selected poets who have been published in this issue. We hope to open up new folders with new concepts to make Poetry the best medium of expressing thoughts.  

~~~Sonnet Mondal.

          Managing Editor,

                                           The Enchanting Verses International.

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EDITORIAL

Incidents and Accidents are a part of our day to day and daily lives.They occur in a way as such that we either neglect them or take them as obvious except when the occurring involve us directly.We shed tears only when something comes down too heavily on us to bear it. We comment only when we think that it will be valued.We lament only when we learn our faults from our own perspectives.But there are people who think beyond these.Whose heart cries in one corner of the globe while another mishap is taking place in the opposite corner of the earth.Who doesn’t take things as obvious but try to bring out and muse upon as to why the things are being obvious.To whom every element of Nature is a wonder and and has its own place of pride and beauty.In literary arena they are referred as Poets or nomadic thinkers.Musing upon things is like a wine addiction for the poets.Its not that people who are not poets are not aware of the themes presented in the poetries but they are not aware how each thing in this green bower whether be non-living or living is related with the everyday truth with which the whole human race is in to survive and trace its journey till it ceases to breathe.This issue of The Enchanting Verses International indicates the same on a much deeper reading with aesthetic thoughtfulness.We hope that the poems featured in this issue will be able to lure everyone’s mind to a new sensational dimension.Couple of poems in this issue have also been introduced in other languages.

We wish all the readers a happy, peaceful and knowledgeable reading...

Dariusz Pacak has been honored with The Enchanting Poet Award Certification.

Dr. Sandra Fowler has been awarded The Editor’s Choice-I Award.

Elisabetta Errani Emaldi has been awarded The Editor’s Choice-II Award.

Dr. Bhaskar Roy Barman has been awarded The Editor’s Choice-III Award.

Speacial anthology contribution has been made by Mr. Rajaram Ramachandran and Mr. Ljubomir Mihajlovshi.

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This ISSUE of THE ENCHANTING VERSES is dedicated to Rudyard Kipling

Biography of Rudyard Kipling(1865-1936 )

Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, India, on December 30, 1865, made a significant contribution to English Literature in various genres including poetry, short story and novel. His birth took place in an affluent family with his father holding the post of Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Bombay School of Art and his mother coming from a family of accomplished women. He spent his early childhood in India where an ‘aya’ took care of him and where under her influence he came in direct contact with the Indian culture and traditions. His parents decided to send him to England for education and so at the young age of five he started living in England with Madam Rosa, the landlady of the lodge he lived in, where for the next six years he lived a life of misery due to the mistreatment - beatings and general victimization - he faced there.

Due to this sudden change in environment and the evil treatment he received, he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life. This played an important part in his literary imagination (Sandison A.G.). His parents removed him from the rigidly Calvinistic foster home and placed him in a private school at the age of twelve. The English schoolboy code of honor and duty deeply affected his views in later life, especially when it involved loyalty to a group or a team.

Returning to India in 1882 he worked as a newspaper reporter and a part-time writer and this helped him to gain a rich experience of colonial life which he later presented in his stories and poems (Martinez, Gabriel A.). In 1886 he published his first volume of poetry, ‘Departmental Ditties’ and between 1887 and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories set in and concerned with the India he had come to know and love so well. When he returned to England he found himself already recognized and acclaimed as a brilliant writer.

Over the immediately following years he published some of his most exquisite works including his most acclaimed poem "Recessional" and most famed novel "Kim". In 1907 Kipling won the Nobel prize in literature in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterized his writings. Death of both his children, Josephine and John, deeply affected his life. Both these incidents left a profound impression on his life, which his works published in the subsequent years after their deaths displays. Between 1919 and 1932 he traveled intermittently, and continued to publish stories, poems, sketches and historical works though his output dwindled. As he grew older his works display his preoccupation with physical and psychological strain, breakdown, and recovery. In 1936, plagued by illness, he passed away into the world beyond, leaving behind a legacy that will live for centuries to come.

Kipling’s works span over five decades, with Tennyson and Browning still writing and Hardy and Yeats unheard of, when his first work Schoolboy Lyrics hit the press (Page, Norman). He wrote during the period now known as the Victorian Age. According to English and Western Literature, conservatism, optimism and self-assurance marked the poetry of this age. Though Kipling’s works achieved literary fame during his early years, as he grew older his woks faced enormous amount of literary criticism. His poems dealt with racial and imperialistic topics which attracted a lot of critics. Critics also condemned the fact that unlike the popular model of poetry, Kipling’ poetry did not have an underlying meaning to it and that interpreting it required no more than one reading. Maguills Critical Survey of Poetry indicates that some critics even attributed the qualities of coarseness and crudeness to his poetry. As Kipling grew older his poetry came under even more scrutiny and doubts began to arise about poetic abilities. These views of the critics come as a surprise due to the fact that even in face of his dwindling reputation in literary circles, his popularity among the masses persisted without change. In fact due to his ability to relate to the layman as well as the literary elite through his works, he joined a select group of authors who reached a worldwide audience of considerable diversity. Kipling’s reputation started a revival course after T.S.Eliot’s essay on his poetic works where Eliot describes Kipling’s verse as "great verse" that sometimes unintentionally changes into poetry. Following Eliot’s lead many other critics reanalyzed Kipling’s verse and revived his poetic reputation to the merited level. In his lifetime Kipling went from the unofficial Poet Laureate of Great Britan to one of the most denounced poet in English Literary History. In contrast to the path his reputation took, Rudyard Kipling improved as a poet as his career matured and by the time of his death Kipling had compiled one of the most diverse collection of poetry in English Literature. ..

 "Birds Of Prey March"

March! The mud is cakin' good about our trousies.
Front! -- eyes front, an' watch the Colour-casin's drip.
Front! The faces of the women in the 'ouses
Ain't the kind o' things to take aboard the ship.

Cheer! An' we'll never march to victory.
Cheer! An' we'll never live to 'ear the cannon roar!
The Large Birds o' Prey
They will carry us away,
An' you'll never see your soldiers any more!

Wheel! Oh, keep your touch; we're goin' round a corner.
Time! -- mark time, an' let the men be'ind us close.
Lord! the transport's full, an' 'alf our lot not on 'er --
Cheer, O cheer! We're going off where no one knows.

March! The Devil's none so black as 'e is painted!
Cheer! We'll 'ave some fun before we're put away.
'Alt, an' 'and 'er out -- a woman's gone and fainted!
Cheer! Get on -- Gawd 'elp the married men to-day!

Hoi! Come up, you 'ungry beggars, to yer sorrow.
('Ear them say they want their tea, an' want it quick!)
You won't have no mind for slingers, not to-morrow --
No; you'll put the 'tween-decks stove out, bein' sick!

'Alt! The married kit 'as all to go before us!
'Course it's blocked the bloomin' gangway up again!
Cheer, O cheer the 'Orse Guards watchin' tender o'er us,
Keepin' us since eight this mornin' in the rain!

Stuck in 'eavy marchin'-order, sopped and wringin' --
Sick, before our time to watch 'er 'eave an' fall,
'Ere's your 'appy 'ome at last, an' stop your singin'.
'Alt! Fall in along the troop-deck! Silence all!

Cheer! For we'll never live to see no bloomin' victory!
Cheer! An' we'll never live to 'ear the cannon roar! (One cheer more!)
The jackal an' the kite
'Ave an 'ealthy appetite,
An' you'll never see your soldiers any more! ('Ip! Urroar!)
The eagle an' the crow
They are waitin' ever so,
An' you'll never see your soldiers any more! ('Ip! Urroar!)
Yes, the Large Birds o' Prey
They will carry us away,
An' you'll never see your soldiers any more!

---

Translations and Poems in Various Languages

  LA POESÍA ES…

(Spanish Poem)


                          Por Julio Cuevas

La poesía es lluvia…
ruta...
fuego...
agua…
aire...
sueño...
ruptura
luz
suspiro
risa
La poesía es…
todo
nada
yo
tú
nosotros
aquellos
otredad
mismidad
decir
callar
grito
silencio
vida
agonía
muerte
capullo
fruto
raíz
alfa
omega
La poesía es…
melodía
ritmo
casa
trillo
rocío
camino
La poesía es…
hoy

mañana
ayer
futuro
tiempo
destiempo
amor
desamor
delirio
locura
entrega
La poesía es…
sexo
antisexo
entrega
desentrega
La poesía es
es...
es...
es...!
filosoficanto
globalillanto
ínsula
transnación
traslación
La poesía es...
es...
es...
es...!
mundo
La poesía es…



by Julio Cuevas

Award Winners

The Enchanting Poet Certification

<-Awarded to Dariusz Pacak

CEYLON WATERCOLOUR                                                                                                              
  to the memory of Kandeviharaya Buddha

 

Buddha resting stills the balance to a point         

a loud stream races remembers the way

in the bloodfill of West setting

banana trees are closing

 

                                wayside flower now silent

 

 

on the edge crown of dust it lies torn out heart         

without voice split apart its time dying

silence builds a humful of flies

a rickshaw is passing

                       

                                the Temple Flower has rung

 

by Dariusz Pacak       
                 Austria

---

Editor's Choice-I Certification

<-Awarded to Sandra Fowler




Distance Is Blue
 
     Sometimes my thoughts exist in your country,
     A place perhaps too harsh for yellow flowers.
     My whisper travels across continents.
     Distance is blue to whom it may concern.
 
     The blazing sun of your reality
     Cannot obscure the frail frost of the moon.
     It casts its magic light on ancient roofs.
     There is no language foreign to its form.
 
     A tear or two, my friend, to mist your eyes.
     No need to reply with an aerogramme.
     You sent your soul in poems long ago.
     I Think old verse speaks loud for loveliness.
 
                                   by Sandra Fowler

                          U.S.A.

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Editor's Choice -II certification

<-Awarded to Elisabetta Errani Emaldi

Literature for peace


 
The soul of our Mother Earth

The colour of illumination

 
You dictator

Two drops of light in the desert

The power of love


The Angel of Peace

Three white doves

 
Lotus of divine light

Mandala of lights

 
And hunger dances


The soul of our Mother Earth

Love doesn’t triumph when 
 stupidity of man contained in his ignorance
does not respect our Mother Earth.

Humanity suffocates, slowly,
very slowly, in its total indifference.

Our Mother Earth, the great alive soul 
warms us  on her heart and
nourishes us, but we are enveloped  by ignorance
we are blind and deaf to her appeal.

Maybe, are we waiting for the ill fruits of our
Mother Earth poisoning us?

Let us not being suffocated by her, we must cure 
our Mother Earth with devotion, because she
nourishes us with love and energy.

I feel my spirit tremble,
while her great sick soul is suffering and
 desperate because her children are ungrateful,
they  haven’t respect for themselves and not even for her.

While she dies slowly and in silent
I feel her sorrow, her suffering and her tears
falling on my anguished heart.

Love triumphs only when
we respect ourselves and our Mother Earth.

Life will continue only if we wake up from the sleep of
indifference.

I feel her suffering breath, acid rain
that falls on me and 
consumes my members, while she implores us

to listen to her echo of pain that flies
to our deaf ears and to our minds
away from heart.

 

BY Elisabetta Errani Emaldi

Italy

---

Editor's Choice-III  Certification

<-Awarded To Bhaskar Roy Barman



CONTRAST

 

Pirouetting around, twirling your skirt

among your friends,

conscious of your paramount beauty,.

you listen to your teachers old and young

and do not give a damn for what they say.

 

When your friends study for the exams,

you tie about your hair white ribbons

and look in the mirror, and imagine

your friends envying you and your teachers

ogling at you.

 

You know I am a poet.

I shall write a long poem to you

that will touch on every aspect

of your paramount beauty

and run to at least fifty pages.

 

I  have a painter among my friends.

He has got many an award, national and international,

for his excellence in painting.

I shall have him paint you,

emphasizing your beauty in broad relief..

 

I know of a woman living in France.

She was much more beautiful than you

when your age.

Now she is living alone in seclusion,

no one, nor his parents, allowed to see her

 

by Bhaskar Roy Barman

India

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(Chosen Article from net Sources)


The Tide Turns For Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 By Bonnie Mason

If Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most popular poet of the 19th century, were alive today, two-hundred years after his birth in Portland, Maine--would he get published? Yes, says poet Annie Finch, director, Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA in Creative Writing and professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. "Longfellow would have an easier time getting published now than at any time in the last half-century. The reason is that there is more of an audience for musical, crafted and accessible poetry than at any time since the height of Modernism." Christoph Irmscher, professor of English at Indiana University, agrees. "Prominent poets, including Pinsky, McClatchy, Richard Wilbur, and more recently Mark Jarman, have voiced their interest and support for Longfellow and implicitly, the type of poetry he represents." Longfellow wrote with an ear on the music of the universe--and crafted and marketed his work so that it was understandable, accessible and affordable for his readers. This, of course, made him successful. Like his poem, "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls," Longfellow's fame rose to high tide in his thirties and forties and remained there for most of his life, but several years before his death, the tide began to recede. Today, two highly respected scholars have helped turn the tide again: Charles C. Calhoun, with the first biography of Longfellow in 40 years, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life (Beacon Press, 2004) and Christoph Irmscher, with Longfellow Redux (University of Illinois Press, 2006), a study of Longfellow's work that provides new insights into its transnational, multi-cultural value. "For Longfellow," says Richard D'Abate, Executive Director of Maine Historical Society, "there was never a contradiction between being an American and being a citizen of the world." "There are many mansions in the house of poetry," Dr. Irmscher says and some of them, after having fallen into disrepair have recently beome habitable again now that the modernist grip on literary history has been loosened, and obscurity is no longer criterion an acceptable poem needs to fulfill." Two-hundred years after his birth on February 27, 1807, the Maine Historical Society in Portland and Longfellow Days in Brunswick celebrated his birth with musical, theatrical, and literary events. The guiding light behind Brunswick's Longfellow Days was Maryli Tiemann, a former English teacher, drama teacher, and adjunct instructor at Bowdoin College who now is program director at Maine Campus Compact in Lewiston. "I felt inspired to gather folks together to honor this man who spent such formative years in Maine and in Brunswick. He's frequently pictured as an old gray beard, but we had the spirited 15 year old, who skipped chapel or ran to class-both those classes he took-and those he taught. Brunswick was also the home of his first romance, as a newlywed-those moments that shape who one becomes." Claudia Knox, who retired to Brunswick from the Washington DC area, joined Tiemann as co-chair of Longfellow Days. She is also a former English teacher, one whose career led ultimately via Jordan and the Ivory Coast to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Her interest in Brunswick's downtown and her background with community arts organizations led her to unite with representatives from Bowdoin College, Pjepscot Historical Society, and many area businesses, churches, andschools to help create the community-building event that Longfellow Days has become. Perhaps Longfellow's gift to us as writers, says Christoph Irmscher, is that he "dared to think of literature as a civic obligation, as something to be consumed and enjoyed by readers from all walks of life. At the same time he was fluent in multiple languages and intimately familiar with the works of writers from all over the world. He gave, through his poems as well as his translations, an international dimension to American literature which it has never quite regained since."

 http://www.brunswickdowntown.com
Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bonnie_Mason

(Selected Chapter from Books)


ELIZABETHAN LYRIC POETRY

from
"A History of English Literature"
1918
byRobert Huntington Fletcher

'The Faerie Queene' is the only long Elizabethan poem of the very highest rank, but Spenser, as we have seen, is almost equally conspicuous as a lyric poet. In that respect he was one among a throng of melodists who made the Elizabethan age in many respects the greatest lyric period in the history of English or perhaps of any literature. Still grander, to be sure, by the nature of the two forms, was the Elizabethan achievement in the drama, which we shall consider in the next chapter; but the lyrics have the advantage in sheer delightfulness and, of course, in rapid and direct appeal.

The zest for lyric poetry somewhat artificially inaugurated at Court by Wyatt and Surrey seems to have largely subsided, like any other fad, after some years, but it vigorously revived, in much more genuine fashion, with the taste for other imaginative forms of literature, in the last two decades of Elizabeth's reign. It revived, too, not only among the courtiers but among all classes; in no other form of literature was the diversity of authors so marked; almost every writer of the period who was not purely a man of prose seems to have been gifted with the lyric power.
The qualities which especially distinguish the Elizabethan lyrics are fluency, sweetness, melody, and an enthusiastic joy in life, all spontaneous, direct, and exquisite. Uniting the genuineness of the popular ballad with the finer sense of conscious artistic poetry, these poems possess a charm different, though in an only half definable way, from that of any other lyrics. In subjects they display the usual lyric variety. There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of all moods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sit lightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts; and some reflective and religious poems. In stanza structure the number of forms is unusually great, but in most cases stanzas are internally varied and have a large admixture of short, ringing or musing, lines. The lyrics were published sometimes in collections by single authors, sometimes in the series of anthologies which succeeded to Tottel's 'Miscellany.' Some of these anthologies were books of songs with the accompanying music; for music, brought with all the other cultural influences from Italy and France, was now enthusiastically cultivated, and the soft melody of many of the best Elizabethan lyrics is that of accomplished composers. Many of the lyrics, again, are included as songs in the dramas of the time; and Shakespeare's comedies show him nearly as preeminent among the lyric poets as among the playwrights.
Some of the finest of the lyrics are anonymous. Among the best of the known poets are these: George Gascoigne (about 1530-1577), a courtier and soldier, who bridges the gap between Surrey and Sidney; Sir Edward Dyer (about 1545-1607), a scholar and statesman, author of one perfect lyric, 'My mind to me a kingdom is'; John Lyly (1553-1606), the Euphuist and dramatist; Nicholas Breton (about 1545 to about 1626), a prolific writer in verse and prose and one of the most successful poets of the pastoral style; Robert Southwell (about 1562-1595), a Jesuit intriguer of ardent piety, finally imprisoned, tortured, and executed as a traitor; George Peele (1558 to about 1598), the dramatist; Thomas Lodge (about 1558-1625), poet, novelist, and physician; Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the dramatist; Thomas Nash (1567-1601), one of the most prolific Elizabethan hack writers; Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), scholar and critic, member in his later years of the royal household of James I; Barnabe Barnes (about 1569-1609); Richard Barnfield (1574-1627); Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), courtier, statesman, explorer, and scholar; Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618), linguist and merchant, known for his translation of the long religious poems of the Frenchman Du Bartas, through which he exercised an influence on Milton; Francis Davison (about 1575 to about 1619), son of a counsellor of Queen Elizabeth, a lawyer; and Thomas Dekker (about 1570 to about 1640), a ne'er-do-weel dramatist and hack-writer of irrepressible and delightful good spirits.

All selected Poems and Poets

for May 2009

CO-PASSENGER

Hail to my school teacher, and,
His sense of grammar,
Suffixed “a” to my first name,
That confused many,
Badly pronounced and badly spelt my name,
On dais, before me with respect,
I had to gulp hanging a dry smile.


The lady in the opposite berth,
To look at whom attracts fine or/and jail,
Under section so, so and so,
Sleeps showing her tanned back,
Hooks of her noodle-strap brassiere,
Hang unclasped,
Sleeping baby’s pink soft hands.

In the morning she wishes me,
Good morning, asks me with modesty,
To bring her a hot coffee.


Similar woman with few extra pounds,
Makes winter even warmer,
In my every alight-to-platform for a stretch,
I found her standing before-
The smoky mirror that lies,
Right on your face.

Now and then she asks me,
To stop the tea sellers,
Careful not to mess her lip lush,
Kisses the earthen cup in passion,
Right before my clean saved cheeks.

 

 By ANUJA MOHAN PRADHAN

      

 

---

Unknown

 

 

Do u know how parched is the soul

That drinks from your eyes

A novice out of control

Intoxicated by your wiles

A shadow in a moonlit night

Trying to capture the sunlight

The truth hidden behind the lies

What a beautiful disguise

A bird pecks at the jewel

Mistaking it for a dewdrop

Fate is cruel

The bird chokes…death makes a stop

Packs the soul in its bag

Muses to itself ‘gosh what a drag!’

Was the jewel to blame?

Perhaps…though its really a shame…

 

By Nasreen Dawood

    

---

Happening of a Death

He is dying to leave from his pains

 

His eyes left him alone in the deep dark

 

His mouth dead and kept closed

 

His ears denied to receive the sounds nearby

 

His senses went to its place

 

His last spell of breath was going on

 

Flies have taken their seat on his face and

 

He was still alive by his breath

 

His thoughts were running to stop at a point

 

He was dead yes he was dead there

 

He came out from his roof as air

 

He is seeing his body as a stranger and

 

Mingled with this universe as air

 

By Sakthi S Ravichandran

---

Love & Deceit

Moon has gone black-spotted,

By Sun’s love that is deep-hearted.

But Sun has always anger carrying with,

Moon has certainly betrayed from beneath.

Thus Sun learnt the art of deceit,

It comes with the dawn, stays with the rays

                                         And goes with the twilight.

 

 

                                                  By PRADEEP KUMAR MOHANTY

---

Please heed

 
      In the clutter of multitasking fury

      Why you worry?

      Your beloved prepared lovely curry

      Eat, drink and be merry!

      Please heed

 

      There is time for work

      There is also time for wine

      Don’t break your spine,

      Till hill-size hard work leads to ill!

      There is money for your need

       Don’t brood too much on your greed

       ‘Sensex’ is not the seed

       Please heed   

 

        Livelihood

        It should not become serpent’s hood

        on the your happy mood

        Please heed

 

   

        Live in present

        Only present is pleasant

        Past and future are tricky friends,

        Makes worry wounds,

        Every printed word

        need not lead to right deed

        Go where heart shows the way

        Feel it’s gay

        Please heed

 

By M.VEERESWARA RAO

---

Idled idealist

He is an idled idealist

A muscled, imbecile

A savant to no avail

In search of a new world

 

While blurring are lines

Between good and bad

Between right and wrong

Dithered of discerning wisdom

He is stranded in the middle

Of labyrinthine lanes all around

Towards which side to stride?

Left? Right? East? West?

 

Fuddled is the ideal vanguard

No friend to walk together

Nor even a foe to offer

A decent fighting pleasure

 

In this social warren

He remains lost and forlorn

Like a frozen mountain

Of vain profusion.

By M.V.S.Sathyanarayana

---

At Land’s end

  At Land’s end

I stand paralyzed

On my feet-

For these will take me no further

For in new frontiers

I will have to unlearn

Whatever I learnt so far

Throw my baggage

For with it I cannot swim.

 

Skyscrapers on one side

And a watery abyss

On the other-

Time to take a plunge

But stand I – nonplussed

Knowing no shore

No destination –

So no desire too.

 

Sages say -

This state of desirelessness

Is Nirvana.

For me – its a

State of void-

Of silence-

Of detachment.

 

Looking within

And without

For I stand

At life’s final shore.

 By Virendra K. Gupta

---

Canvass of Supreme Reality

Illuminating and appreciating the core self,
Tones down insouciance, accentuates self-belief
And paints a canvass of Supreme Reality - ‘Truth’
Through which every wonder dream will come forth.

Enlivening the mind with thoughts, aleatoric;
Highlights the centre of grace, cosmic-
Unifying inner energy clears blot of inaccuracy
And vital breath removes stains of emotional vagrancy.

Adhering to moral values- Gnostic,
Laminates with concrete character – idyllic,
Unleashing aeonian bliss of the soul
Carves out an intuitive niche, sans foul.

Brushing aside the thick layer of toxic theme
Lets creativity of inner genius stream,
Annealing emotional surface with God’s force,
Converts oblivion into nirvana - the ultimate source.

Hammering rubble of the self, inexplicable,
Lets the hallmark emerge, so invaluable;
Then the playground of fantasies will come alive
To slash chronic fatigue so as to thrive.

Replacing fake looks with aesthetic serenity
Is living life full scale, with truthfulness till eternity-
Don’t gild the lily, to avoid pretentious glare,
And showcase the Mandala of existence in flair.

Celebrating the nostalgic divine indwelling
Will add to life experiences that are enriching,
Developing a deep tint of beauty, so very immutable
Will restore lost images, making life once again stable

By Chitra Lele

---

  PULSATING VOID

Like walking in a tulip garden

I undo the aquablue,

how many steps you were away,

 

entwined like mangrove:

our roots were standing upright

to breath in moist silhouette

 

of equatorial sun, blooming

in anguish of separation: come

one day to leave me forever,

 

a train in desert going nowhere

on ancient wheels of time;

and  I will aim for a perforated flight

 

one day to be reborn and the shadowed

ride under the truth will open

the husky lips of pain

 

by SATISH VERMA

---

GOD IS GOODNESS GOODNESS IS GOD

 
LET US NOT HURT,

LET US BE ALWAYS KIND.

 

LET US FIGHT TERRORISM,

LET US REFORM TERRORISTS.

 

LET US FIGHT VIOLENCE,

LET US BE NON-VIOLENT.

 

LET US FIGHT STARVATION,

LET US LIGHT WISDOM.

 

LET US PRACTICE TOLERENCE,

LET US SHOW COMPASSION.

 

LET US FIGHT CORRUPTION,

LET US CORRECT CORRUPTS.

 

LET US BE GOOD TO ALL,

LET US GIVE LOVE TO ALL.

By A.V. Sridharan

---

NOBODY  UNDERSTANDS  ANYBODY

so  many  times  I  had  absurd  claims
I  thought  my  soul  was  a  perfect  radar
for  your  steps, your  breath
your  weeping

with  ardour  and  love  we  could
finally  reach  in  peace  the  other’ s  skin
if  we  didn’ t  discover  with  disappointment
that  we  are  the  prisoners  of  our  epidermis

and  your  singing,  and  your  weeping,  and  your  look,
the  emotions,  the  incomparable  and  your  dreams
all  of  them  are  mine  for  ever

tearfully,  crying, I  hold  you  hopelessly
I  embrace  you  like  I’ ll  never  embrace  you  again
you  exist  in  me  deeper  than  in  your  heart
and  shaken,  I  whisper  to  you  from  a  distance
- nobody  has  ever  understood
anybody !

BY Dorin Popa

---

Virginity

In the dark she was….

Not knowing there's even something called light.

She knew no peace ….

Cos there's a raging storm in her soul .

She is bound and enslaved ….

Cos she doesn’t know what it means to be freed.


 From the light he came….

Not knowing a being was shackled in the dark.

He came with peace…

Which would eliminate the worries she bears as a burden.

He came with a liberating object….

Which would unshackle her slavery.

 

She needs to see the light….

Cos it would illuminate her dark world.

She needs to be in peace….

Cos it would quieten the raging storms in her soul.

She needs to be freed…

Cos it would liberate her being.


 He made her see the light….

Which enabled her  sight in ways she never imagined.
He made her feel the peace…

Which enabled the liberation of her soul.
He made her  feel the freedom

Which enabled her flight to unimaginable heights .

 

 

by Agoudou joseph Femi.

---

AS A SORROW

Very painful as a sorrow

Stand in my mind

Disturbing and commotion.

All feelings got down.

Nobody can forget

With a broken heart.

Anybody could live

Near the violence or disaffection.

We must be all together.

A laudest voice with a hope message,

Over looking on the horizont.

Making affords

For understand our priorities,

Right to enjoy peace,

Right to be in this marvelous world.

No  nuclear shadows of death.

No clouds in the sky,

We have to see the sun,

Every sun shines, every day.

 

By MARINA DE LA CUEVA

---

FETTERS

He screams to thousand ears,

Chains, chains, chains,

A moving flash,

Before thousand eyes.

 

Sparkling chains-

Hanging from his shoulders,

Whose ends, hooked into his fingers,

His thick jute coat,

Studded with padlocks.

 

He carries his fetters,

On the long, flat platform,

From morning to late night,

Counting his days by passing trains,

In the open jail,

Of unfulfilled wishes.

 

 

By ANUJA MOHAN PRADHAN

---

O! LORD KRISHNA

O! charming  Krishna, we didn`t know,
so heartless today you would grow,
you have proved this fact to the  hilt,
our world  of love on sand was built,
tear open our hearts, in them see,
you are there completely,
if our deaths gladdens you,
we bow our heads ,
cut them off and go,
we swear by you,
we won`t have a sigh,
to make you happy,
we`ll gladly die

 

by Dr Ram Sharma.

---

The Roots of Entitlement

it’s all so Faustian

this sinning by

way of Satan

theology:

 

your cheating neighbor

(Satan, by another name)

promises you

if you

look

the other way

he’ll see to it

that you

come out

A Big Winner

 

that’s corruption

 

built into the fabric

 

of variations

on the theme

of Clean and Sober

Christianity

 

 

In any event

 

having been

a born sinner

you go to church

 

tell God you’ve sinned

(due to Satan)

 

and you’re sorry

really really

really sorry

 

and God forgives you

 

and assures you

 

you’re still going

to Heaven

 

anyway

 

 

as time goes by

this simple process

ends up discarded

and forgotten

 

ergo

after that

you’re still cheating

duh

 

it’s now a casual habit

 

 

all you remember is

you’re supposed

to deserve

Something Good

By the End

of Each Day

 

you’re entitled!

by way of

 

His Forgiveness

 

and

you simply

come

to expect it

 

as you

trudge forward

in shallow

 

full-bore

 

adolescence

 

it’s then like

gimme more pizza

 

okay you twit

please

happy now?

 

yawn

 

 

alas

and alack

 

a downside:

 

when God

forgives you

Enough

 

Seriously

 

What The Bleeping Hell

 

all bets are off

 

by Donald Croft Brickner

        U.S.A

 

---

You are the God

---

Lovers of the Dark

 

 
Darkness keeps them stark

Bright light kills

They live in the caves dark

Spider like tiny blind things;

The aboriginal heritage of the earth

Troglobites.

Man has abandoned project mining

Left the rocky caves wishing

To protect the lovers of the dark,

An insect but not included in the fauna

Near Pannawonica in Australia,

One of the earthly sites.

 

By  Aju Mukhopadhyaya

---

THE DEW DROPS

 

Even now I am dreaming

After all that has passed between you and me.

Inside something is screaming,

Awake! Arise and just be!

On the rose petals the dancing dew drops

Reflecting the myriad colours of the morning sun;

Time-space continuum, as it were, stops,

The monster of ignorance is on the run!

 

BY Mohan Chandra Mehrotra

---

  BEGGING

   

When a poor man asks for petty alms

He draws ridicule and hostility

But begging seen in dignified forms

Often goes uncensored in valueless society,

Concealing real incomes to accumulate wealth,

Contractors exploiting labourers by force,

Traders extracting more money than worth

Their goods for gain against law in force,

Officials asking for favours from

Subordinates to consider their rightful plea,

Legislators demanding large sums from

People for showing them favours illegally,

Are all simply begging in different forms,

As they violate values and norms.

 

By V.K.Muthu

---

Center of Life

In the center of our fear

They shoot poison arrows against us.

In the center of our fear,

We forget to trust, to forgive,

 To cry, to see, to ask if they still

Will notice us

 

In the center of our fear,

We take shelter in bad conditions.

Accuse us mutually and sometime betrayal,

The fraud, leave to us both alone,

And with me shedding a tear.

 

In the center of our fear,

There are terrible wars against us.

In the center of our fear,

We make sacrifice that may be un-just and by lust,

Hope, Faith, longing, luck and deeply felt love.

 

In the center of our fear,

We cry justice when we are not satisfied

We take a life and now we are horrified.

 

In the center of our fear,

Sometimes there is no light

But the wars are won in the middle of the night

We rub on ointment over injuries,

Never let another cross over your boundaries

After the batter we hear a heavenly tune

We sit around, clean our guns and lick our wounds,

In the center of our fear,

We take the time for battle dressing.

Just before we began again we pack up our battle messing.

Don’t you ever thing we are not scared or have fear of sacrifice

It is for you I go off to war and I give my life

 

 

By Mary wismer

---

BETTER WORLD

 

One and two,
Bombs ripped through.

Three and four,
My little eyes pour.

Five and six,
Terror's new tricks.

Seven and eight,
I shudder in fright

Nine and ten,
My school is a dark den

Before I end my rhyme¦
Another blast, stops my time
My better world dreams fly
As the bitter world bids me bye

The school taught us values,
To stick to virtuous truth.
To foster faith in the lord.
Know, truth is god

I will grow up to be
A conscientious mother.
My kids, whom I will groom
Will be men of character

I will pass on the values
That makes man humane
That promises global citizens
Make worthy men of name

 
Don't worry, for the flying dreams
Will perch on each brave heart;
To sprout into saplings, fresh,
That fastens love and man

 

 


I sow my dreams of a better world
That I was deprived of!
I reveal the secret true
Known to you, yet, new.

The earth is one big heart,
That breathes just ˜love and love"
Just pass on love for future,
Spread more love for now.
If we practice fairness,
we can harness peace

I leave! My promise behind,
In your efforts, new!
With god's choicest blessings,
My dream shall come true!

By Apurva iyengar

---

ATHENS

Athens stone of sapphire of ground the Ring… “
".. 

 
Kostis Palamas

Years rooted here
less than the rich
sunlight
Greek light
stone chisel
coalesce with the Gods
with souls, with ideas and names

               ***
Petals of roses
fall to earth
Centuries browse
under the marble sculptors
invincibles

columns of the Parthenon

               ***
With the golden armor
hand and the sword
Athena, goddess of the city
pilgrims who
searching for the way
Immortal spirit of the Greek
leads

«Greece before
the sort of glorious years
never fade
why is unfading Sofia »

                ***
My friends and my acquaintances
Flowers on tree clones
flourished and matured
all these years

from the weight they fell

in this ground
where wounded bird

in the fog from the current invaders it resembles

                   ***


Athens
Eternal Beauty soil glorious
lightning capture tools
the cloud and the Star
Atticus Sky
each new day
crowned with ancient ideals

                  ***
New Sun, New route
A Golden City
there always remains hidden
the handful of God
hiding

 

by Eftichia Kapardeli

---

Childsplay

like children we play

these games we play

n'er a mind given

while carelessly livin'

not a whim or care

for sorrow borne there

nor selfish love taken

for passion we're makin'

beguiled, we've lost

those lovers we've tossed

one could be the one

lone...would we have known

with blinders we wander

forsaken fields yonder

by Kathleen Walker

---

EXOTICA

 

Forbidden taboo thickset studded portals

Gazing through rusty keyhole slit

Outsider peering into otherworldly concubine

Kismet kisses chapped lips pucker

 

                                             Emptying Pandora’s box mothballs rattle

                                             Letting out evils save Hope

                                             Springs eternal needlepoint spellbound brocade

                                             Magic wand delusions wished away

 

Vaulted arches stuffy cobwebbed corners

Silken spider weaving Venus flytraps

Huddled stratagem queens stung senseless

Lonely odyssey veiled in secrecy

 

Thorny rosebuds forced open yearning

Wanton tender mercy outreach barred

Ruffled peacock feathers vainglorious strut

Crested heads fading iridescent spots

 

                                             Aromatic frankincense gum resin myrrh

                                             Permeating odalisque perfumery essence diluted

                                             Sugary spice seeds burst open

                                             Samovar mint tea cardamom laced

 

Caravanserai stopover refurbished Holiday Inn

Knotty flying carpets controller grounded

Crumbling stonewalls lime mortar quicksand

Castrated sprites slipping through cracks

 

 

BY Dr. Charles Frederickson

---

Thoughts of a local lotus

 

  The pyrogenic
sun that debates love
is cubical at the order
of

a frog
an amphibian male
seeking the lotus shade
away from mathematical
controversy

* * *
The life of a seed
Is seeded in the fruit born of it
Cyclical
Psychology transcending from
Water
Precipitates
And trickles down in darkness
Ink of dismissed liquid eye

across that window
The sun is shunning his eyebrows…

* * *
Anarchy
My stray dog
In search of bones and numbers
That labels
Wounded genitals
Of burnt prisoners
Huddling across the purple-stone bay

Cannibalism devours
Species of poetry
Not me
But the grey intellects
To bisect the
polemical beauty
Of sex
beneath every face…

 

By Linda Ashok

---

Exuberance

Words

Sing

Like the singing

Vast steppes of the Central Russia,

Stretched out to the infinity,

In the golden sun,

And culturally

 Encountered, first time,

In the delicate prose of

Our beloved monocled master

Chekhov.

 

The words restless

 Tumble down

From the active mind of

The composing poet,

The way,

Jumbled

Coins pour out

From the overused piggy bank of the kids,

In small suburban homes

Of Mumbai, Kolkatta or Delhi.

 

The words cascading

 Are

Robust and energetic,

Charged with verbal power…

Like some hyper kids,

Making the dull routinised mornings

Exuberant and lively,

And making prosaic urban regulated life

More colourful for their lonely grandfathers.

 

By Dr. Sunil Sharma

---

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CONCERT

All my body is land,

my eyes storm envelope forest

hoping the first color of rainbow.

All my solitude

wakes up with the sing of birds

for feels to me accompanied by myself.

 

Is all I need,

by the sleep music of a verse

sleeping me in the live peace,

when the moment will go on

I will to feel with the enough force

to put the new step 

in the road of love.

 

I’m the same silence’s mountain,

I’m the same feeling’s stone

loving his site,

I have the same color water river

in the caress than lives in my hands.

 

Come here, my brother

let me heal your pain

with the sweet sound musical

of this poem,

than are seeing my eyes, right now:

 

The most beautiful concert

of the sun, when the afternoon

is a miracle love,

and the love is possible in the word.

 

By Issa Martínez Llongueras

---

The Spring Time Of Life Creativity

A spring time of life creativity
Long before us
There once had been -
This is from where we humans, too, are derived -
The Merman and the Nymph within the waters -
Universal Fluidum -
These are our origin, our kinship most intimate! -
And First Man, first to see sun's light on earth
Nourished by the saps through a hole-black Vulva, 
Embossed into secret earth retreats, 
Centrifugally centripetally
fertilizing, 
Would have certainly had, you'd bet, 
His visions
Set in tune with the unembodied premium
Young & sportive Cosmic Couple's dream creation world
That had parented Him in Her, 
God all around, 
Very accurately -

So many funny, strangely physical, quirky
Animal gook & geek heads to be
Visualized in dreamy mindscapes of sudden inspiration then, 

Out of which grand seeing in
Gay times of Spring seasons, and a
Veritable peak time in young Nature come alive, 
It holds that
The abounding nature spirits possessed of
Ever stronger body dreams naturally are
Pressing for the creation of
Themselves in Earth's solid matters, 
All these selfsame animals, first seen in hazy dreams, 
Now suddenly hopping around in flesh and horned, 
Out there, beyond the loam -

The grand stage enactionment
Orchestrated through alignment of webs from
Threads spun in Cosmic Mind with the lively motions on
The planetary seed of our globe, the
Furtive spur for the earth seed to germinate, 
Seconded and carried on further in First Man's visionary faces -

The earthen destillary's utensils handled
Through Her various moods of global tempests
And Her lighter weather tempers, 
And Their means of fine-tuning the ladling storms cross- & directionwise, 
On this our so revolutionary globe, 
Destined to be focused on by real-time Gods in the making, 

For the act of
A mysterious Creation's high-spirited, 
Cosmodreamvision-empowered encapsulization into divinely
Potent magic seeds of ever more & more variegated new forms and
Figures of Life frolicking, all of which eventually
Chance to be mixed up, boiled and
Served out in seed form by
The adventurously playful cosmic visionaire's
Quickening arm of reproduction
In some deep-bottomed vaginal cups
On the rock of earth, during the festival of this
God's world arena's grand self-enhancement, with all
The happy-go-lucky planet's earth spirits concentrated and
Gathered in for a most favourably weathered
Spring time season of (r) evolutionary creation -

All spiced up ingredients of lively matter red-hot with
Most vibrant energy.

A season, surpassed since long by
Another era of actions on the globe, 
The ones before us and the present one, 
That but until this very day, though
Not any longer bent on diversifying seed creativity -

(With our human demigods taken over the command
Rather to the contrary as of now) -

Reverberates still so wondrous
Through high and low of the earth planet's go.

 

By Erhard Lang

 

---

  A Poem

 

How should a poem be?
Crystalline, mirrored the placid lake
Stately like me, intoned the tree
Free flowing, gurgled the river
Spontaneous and lively, crooned a bird
Fragrantly enticing, droned the bee
Captivating, laughed the butterfly.

How about colorful? Asked the flowers
Deep and meaningful, averred the vale
With certain majesty, echoed the hills.
Refreshing, whispered the summer breeze
Mellow. Evocative. Crackled autumn’s leaves

So, deep within the inspiring woods
I scribbled and scrawled and hastened
To proudly dedicate my poem...
All nature burst into splits !

Oh, you poor nitwit !
The soul of nature cannot be conveyed
Except with the breath of immortality!

 

 By Shernaz Wadia

---

Emancipation

 

Compass of freedom directs us within
In our soul freedom tunes, songs of redemption
Let not liberty die in our heart
Let not freedom dwindle in our mind
Let our feast be so strong
Break the prison of fear
Resurrect our soul, spirit rekindle

Let our mind be free
Let our spirit dance
Let our soul stand out
Not timid but with triumph

Let the chain be broken
For our freedom exists
Neither in the west nor in the east

In the spirit of oneness
With the bond of unity
Respect for who we are
Vision for who we can be
Let the chain be broken
Let freedom come to life
As we break the chain from our mind
BE FREE and sing
Songs of redemption

by Fasika Ayalew

---

 
THANK YOU

Send us your feedback

©2009The Enchanting Verses International NO PART OF THE CONTENTS OF THE ISSUE-VI OR THE WEBSITE CAN BE COPIED FOR COMMERCIAL OR OTHER PURPOSES WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE ENCHANTING VERSES INTERNATIONAL.

Dear Sonnet,

Its a dazzling issue with decorative pages and enough material to make it a poetry journal.

Wishing the best,
Aju Mukhopadhyay.
Novelist and Poet,India.



Dear Sonnet,
 
I wish to thank you and the staff of 'Enchanting Verses'
for so graciously awarding a first to me. It would have been
an honour to me just to have,'Distance Is Blue' included in
such a world class,beautiful publication. But this is a dream
come true,a gift for a lifetime,and I am very grateful.
 
As my old friend Menk Katz might have said,'Because of you,
my feet have wings this day'.
 
Wishing you only the best now and always,my distant
colleagues and friends,
 
Warm regards,
 
Sandra Fowler,Litt.D.
U.S.A



Dear EV Fellow Poets,

The May issue of EV is absolutely enchanting and of a high creative acumen.I congratulate all the winners.My best wishes to EV Team

Regards,
Chitra Lele.
India.



Dear Mr. Sonnet

The Enchanting Verses has indeed graduated to an
international e-journal of high standard within a short span. My
congratulations to all members of the EV team whose dedication and
efforts have made this possible.

Warm regards,
Sunil Uniyal,
New Delhi,
 India.



Dear Mr. Sonnet,

I'm very surprised and happy that you Sonnet, and  editorial staff of The Enchanting Verses International,   have honored me The Enchanting Poet Award. It is nice to hear, that somebody has recognized and understand your own way of transformation, done by  art technique.  
 
I find as very smart and clever Editorial foreword to the May issue of The Enchanting Verses Int. Thank you so much. I didn't expect any reaction of you on my poetry. That night, I just sent my poems only for publication- if any.  And now -this surprise: Award.

Thanks,
Dariusz Pacak,
Austria.

Dear Mr Sonnet Mondal,

Thank you very much for your having awarded me the Editor's Choice and published my poem on your website.
Regards,
Bhaskar Roy Barman.
India