Mutilated truth

This morning a word came reluctantly about a mutilation. I took it as a wrong message couched in bad words. But I have found out at the end of the poem that poems are made of mutilated messages.

In between there came a fragmentary truth and somehow there seems a strong linkage between truth and poem but a fragmentary truth will lead to the whole poem . Because poems are themselves fragments of life.

Fragments become whole poems at the end when the epigram comes. Every poem has to have an epigram since you cannot leave the loose end of anything hanging . Epigrams are a fragmentary truth. They are fragments of our lives.

* Epigrams
Wonder why I have to have a mutilated message and when I finally have it for a poem I have to round it off by a family epigram.

I call it a family epigram because mutilation is a bad word and I have somehow seal off the message by a respectable looking epigram.

But sometimes epigrams are not family type. They are rebellious and end up saying more mutilation .The poems arouse suspicions. They sound as if they have a hidden agenda of an ideology. They are so incongruous with the rest of the poem. Poor reader ,if there is one, shall bear the brunt.

* Loose ends
Now I wonder why we cannot have the loose ends hanging. Let the impoverished reader supply the sign-off. If there is a reader, that is. If he is poor enough for it.

Or he too may leave the ends hanging too. A curiosity! He may supply the bad words for the mutilation .He may leave it like that.

* White shroud
The music is painful on the ears and I sit here as mute audience. I wait for the white shroud.

I can only recall this morning’s darkness. The darkness of a Korean poet. A Korean blanket , warm on body and dark on the eyes.

A shroud will now cover my darkness. I see no more darkness. Tufts of my silver hair shall fall all around me . The music goes on in the wall uninterrupted.

* Ah No
Now on the green bench someone is already sitting and now I am on another under the green neem tree. Kids are on their swings discussing school politics. A man in green lungi is dancing his limbs to perfection.

Morning we thought of a stern Hardy whose Ah ,No comes every fifth line . Wind and rain come too quickly and too often. Like hei ho in Kurt’s slipstick. A ballad has to have a refrain and in any case happiness is episodic in character in a general drama of pain. That was what the Mayor said in his novel. Ah, no.