Hello Everyone!
A day I started late but now ends with total normalcy. Even though I am still not sure what I should do and should not here in this place I am kinda getting around. Now I know how good Texas was, how good Kansas was, how good California was and above all how wonderful Wisconsin was. I want to get back to Wisconsin, a place I consider as my second birthplace. I enjoyed every bit of it. I was angry, sad, happy and arrogant to say it in another way life was full there. Now no matter how I try to fit in and how much accommodative people are nothing satisfy me well like those three years. There are a lot of names, Megan, Katrina, Maggie, Jessica and someone not from there Linda these are some of the woman who came to my life. Then there were those great friends Ian, Nathan, Brian, Jim, Randy, Steve, Deepak, Nitin, Prabhakar, Cecil wow I can list a lot of names here. They all contributed to the well being of mine. There is one who stands out of it all ‘She’ taught me the biggest lesson, that love cannot be won by tricks or to put it in another way, she won the tricky game and I was defeated.
Now when I look back exactly 6 years after my life got royally screwed I know there are only two to blame Linda and myself. I know she will never see any of my writings as the hatred was that much. I may not even smile at her even if by chance I meet her because my love burned away in my struggle to survive. This is the first time ever I am mentioning her name in my sites till now I only said ‘She’. If she ever finds this post my apologies to her for saying her first name.
One thing is sure I am way away from that reality called love, I will never be able to backtrack to my own heart, on my own strength.
This is a poem I finished in the winter of 1999 when I was unemployed, broke and heart broken. I started long time back to write it about10 years before I even met Linda, but the screw up really helped me to finish this poem. There is a lot more I could’ve written in this poem but even now it is the longest poem I’ve ever written. I may add more but I am not sure if I will ever do that or not. The I idea of the poem first originated in mind after a real life event. When I was in college we wake up early in the morning to do our studies. One night me and my friend Timor heard this birds cry, it sounded very sad. And ever early morning we heard that for like a week and one morning there was no cry. Next day we went around the possible tree where the bird might’ve sat. We found the corpse of a bird with black and white spots on it. I felt really sad and helpless. I don’t use to write at that time. I first thought about writing it and wrote it in a Malayalam poem. I am not good in writing in Malayalam. The idea was kept in my memory archives and when I started to write in English I tried to write a poem with that. But I was not knowing how to finish it. Like I said earlier… the bad relationship and the way it all turned out put me away from town and one day when I was walking beside the lake in the evening the whole area got covered with mist. I cannot walk any further as I can’t see anything in the dark. When the mist was cloaking me the ending of this poem came to my mind. I ran through darkness and the thick mist I ran home and sat and wrote it all down. I still remember one of my good friend who read this poem telling me this “By far the best poem I’ve read” Like I said when I first posted in LonelyPoet.Com in 1999 I hope you all have the patience to read a 95lines long poem.
Song Of The Dying Nightingale.
Oh those nights I remember,
Warm dark and starless,
The cunning fox howls after the steal,
Neighbor’s dog howls in frustration,
The rumblings of the city buses and trains,
All settles past the last phase of the night,
And at the first phase of the morn,
The low voice of the nightingales song I heard,
A tune adored by melancholy,
A tune the whole nature listens in stillness,
And as a blessing brings daybreak to the world,
Or may be to soothe the pain of the singer.
Every night I waited to hear,
The variations of the sad and painful tune,
Seven weeks and three days passed,
With every morning of mine in tears,
And on that night I waited,
But the long tiring day threw my mind away,
Into the depths of sleep and the world of subconscious,
Where I saw two lovely birds singing,
Sitting on the different branches of the same tree,
Singing in high and low note reaching counter point,
And to the different tune of each bird dances,
The whole nature with joy and pride,
Filling every corner with scent of love,
Taking sides of each bird in turns,
The clinging of the branches and leaves,
The whistling wind that bumps around,
The steady stream all in union,
Makes the perfect orchestra;
But the law of nature always is,
That nothing goes in perfect harmony,
The male trying hard to get in tune with the female.
The different tunes counter point lost,
In the obsession of her who craved,
The unknown, the unheard, the unbelievable,
And for him love remains untold,
What’s heard was the babblings of the Ravens instead,
After eyes shut, mouth sealed, and wings broken,
Every morning from his soul rose,
The pathos of the tunes she sung,
Never ate, never slept but lived his time in sorrow,
Seven weeks and three days he wept,
And the unforgiving life left him without mercy.
From the virtual death I woke up in tears,
Seeing the lord of the day in all his glory,
The sleep, the dream all seem unreal,
What felt was the pain of a departing soul,
The power of the dream was gone,
When at the end of the long search,
Beneath a big banyan tree I found,
The featherless corpse of the sad singer,
The ever roaring mother nature waited in stillness,
Anger, sorrow and frustration all merged,
To make me understand once more, helplessness,
Closing all my senses I walked away,
From that place with a pleadge,
That I’ll rather live as a broken-hearted,
Than break any lovers heart.
Time and long struggle with life,
Took away the sadness of mine,
And the tune which I adored,
Faded away into the bad memory of mine,
In the very many years gone by,
I won, I lost and I survived,
Newness to nothingness, believable to unbelievable,
But always stood up to life without regrets,
Seven seas I passed from motherland,
From the land of warmth and mystery,
To the land of snow and wonders unheard,
Here again I won, I lost and I survived,
But the ever loving soul seem tired,
When loses outnumbered success,
All the castles I built turned to dust,
All the harmonious to disharmonious,
No thoughts, no dreams, no sleep,
As everything is in the season of decline,
Even the just set sun seems to hide fast,
From the eyesight of an unfortunate,
I feel so much vulnerable these nights,
Walking by the lake through the mist,
In moonless nights burying my last hopes,
I feel the remains of the winter, when the mist embraces,
In between, the warmth kisses my cheeks,
And sometime the western wind,
Brings me the smell of spring,
But there are those moments,
When everything stops even stars not blinking,
No warmth, no cold, no smell around,
The deadly stillness and silence of the nature,
Where I see the darkest part of the dark,
And hear nothing but the beat of my heart,
Then from the depths of my soul rise,
The tune from the soul of the dying nightingale.
©RIAZAHAMMED.COM. This poem was written and released in LonelyPoet.Com in the winter of 1999.
