Feet, feet that walked away with the toes

Heavy the hoods of the eyes     
that laboured the scan of horizons
Heavy the course of the thoughts     
that sat unstirred on the sill of the stare

Heavy this ancient bottomed nose      
sitting in judgment over this meat
Endlessly shunting the frenzied workers     
now sniff-drunk and steam-bellowed in the street

This the scull careered through rutted scars      
the primeval hair bushed in pathways
Where long tribes with long lances     
prod the undergrowth for signs of lost bones

These the ears that heard the wake of worlds      
wandering in the ever irretraceable tread
Ears though that admit the silent secrets     
ever still and hospitable to the panicky refrain

This the assembled machinery, forging fire     
have dropped the tongs
Down the corridors of investigation      
hurtling in darkening diseases

These the loins, companion of time      
stalked through fire, filth, and foam
Baked in the hot ovens of empires     
wearied some morning in blurry depredation

Wobble-eyed, knee-tied, dragged with pacing company     
through yesterdays that are forever lost indemnity
Heavy the larvae lipped throb, kiss and consider     
heavy the molten strata ooze, consider and kiss

These the organs that prodded nations     
and shrivelled up to curse them all in pain
Pursed its potency, convulsed the course of the vein      
this the dismembered member of the tribe

Heavy, alas, these feet that thump     
jog and reel in the dancing rhythm of millenniums
Trod on the will-less face of faiths     
twitched their toes and walked their way

From: 
T Wignesan




ABOUT THE POET ~
If I might be allowed to say so, I think my "first" love was poetry. Unfortunately for me, the British curricula at school did not put me in touch with the Metaphysical Poets, nor with the post-Georgian school. Almost all the school texts after World War II contained invariably Victorian narrative poems and some popular examples of Romantic poetry. I chanced upon a selection of T. S. Eliot's and Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and a little later on Pope's An Essay on Man and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. That did the trick. Yet, I regret not having taken to prose in earnest earlier than the publication of my first collection: Tracks of a Tramp (1961). There's nothing like trying your hand at all kinds of prose exercises to come to grips with poetry. Or rather to see how poetry makes for the essence of speech/Speech and makes you realise how it can communicate what prose cannot easily convey. I have managed to put together several collections of poems, but never actually sought to find homes for them in magazines, periodicals or anthologies. Apart from the one published book, some of my sporadic efforts may be sampled at http://www.stateless.freehosting.net/Collection of Poems.htm


Last updated July 05, 2016