}} Trishanku still hangs |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Trishanku still hangs

Retrospect engenders
remorse– who looks back

without a flutter
sweeping through his chest?

My grimace came while
I had breaths left

in a kingdom that was the better
for my gracing its high throne

as my deeds were soft as combed silk
leaving my people snug and warm

their grain fat, their children plump
their work ludic, their hearts at peace.

As I aged it became clear
that heaven lay along my path.

To my son I gave Ayodhya
and made for the embrace

of the forest, the mother
there to die a renunciate.

I shed my robe, my crown, my jewels
and gazed at my royal abode:

this body, weak and wrinkled
that had enabled my good deeds.

In a final act of virtue
I’d make of it a meal for the beasts.

Looking up, my soul would rise
and, parting the curtains of the sky

be feted by celestial beings
then brought to the court of the gods

there to take my rightful seat. The thought
filled me with pride, but truer was

my love for what I could touch.
I could not let it go; I would take

to heaven this body of mine, although
old and frail, for did it not merit

eternal bliss for its good works?
That this couldn’t be didn’t strike me,

a king, given to possibilities.
And so I took myself to a sage

and made him light the ritual fire
whose smoke would waft me heavenward

even in my earthly form.
Powered by his chants I rose up

into the sky, higher, higher,
till I saw the patchwork fields

my loving care had kept so safe.
I saw border outposts standing tall

dissuading what enemies my kingly skills
hadn’t already brought to peace.

For one last time I saw it all–
then looked up to my just rewards:

the panicked faces of the gods.
You may not enter in human form

they said, may not defy nature,
which is that death must have the flesh.

Arrogant one, we cast you down.
Fall and die, then return to our fold.

I screamed, and clutched their glowing arms
that dissolved as miasma in my hands.

At first, I hurtled downwards, then
found my fall broken by a cloud.

I hung in air of no provenance:
the only alien in all the realms.

The gods did not let me in;
the sage did not let me fall.

Shouldn’t he have set me down to die
of earthly causes at my due time and

leave the realms undisturbed?
But no, ego was involved.

What he’d begun he wouldn’t end
and it was I who paid the price.

In the end I was sent to a heaven
made for me and me alone

where the jealous, mischievous gods
swayed the sage with age-old tricks.

I presided over that heaven
but I hung upside down.

Thus I couldn’t lord it as Indra does.
There I dangle, all by myself

king of my kingdom, of all that I see,
with the sky at my feet, the land over me

with no challengers to my throne
no enemies to raise my mettle

but also nobody to call mine.
This the gods and the sage must have known:

a heaven for one
is a hell of loneliness.
 
 
 
← Suhit Kelkar