Wednesday, December 12, 2007

I beg for forgiveness


Forgive me
For I blushed at the thought of someone
And flushed at the sight of someone

Forgive me
For my heart skipped a beat
And my pulse raced
As I caught him stealing glances at me

Forgive me
For I stood before my reflection
For many hours
Grooming myself
In silk and chiffon
Choosing pearls and crystals
For embellishments
So he would not take his eyes off me

Forgive me
For I dreamt
Of togetherness with him
Whenever the full moon
Filled my courtyard
For I yearned for his company
When the cool breeze
Carrying the smell of jasmines
Blew against my face
For I wept in his longing
When the first showers of rain
Drenched my body
For I burned in his separation
As I walked by the sea shores alone

I beg for forgiveness
I should have been that drop of rain
That descends upon the ocean…
Sent from the heaven,
Pure in her form
She is intercepted by no one
But the ocean Himself
Fie upon my choice to flow through land
In the form of a river
Only to be fed by tributaries and glaciers
Only to be received by kingdoms and empires
Even before her wedding with the ocean

I should have saved all of myself
My mind and my soul
To offer to you,
The God of my dreams
For it was your prerogative
To initiate love in my life

But rest assured, my last love
There shall be no one after you
In this lifetime

I have thrown away the flowers of wilderness
That I had once gathered
For my search has now come to an end
With the finding of the Sacred Lotus

6 comments:

Pramod Shankar said...

Dear Sowmya, I was honestly blown away. It is a great piece, shaped by deep feeling, tempered by longing, filigreed by the fine dexterity that only pure love can bring. It has its own value as a piece of writing, even if you separate the personal feelings behind it. You should write more, and publish your work.

On a personal level, purity is not a question of the path traversed by the droplet, but how much it sparkles when it finally meets the ocean.

BonDon said...

The poem is touching. I have few comments :)

Poem shows how deep you love someone, and shows your modesty. However,
You are pure. You are flawless. You have a warm heart, you appreciate beautiful things, any one who loves you will appreciate these in you too. You don’t have to ask forgiveness to anyone for being yourself.

Sowmya Chakravarthy said...

Thak you Pramod for your words....It is an evaluation in the true toastmaster spirit...

DonJose said...

Simply beautiful... Raises a lot of questions which are probably left unanswered...
only one general suggestion - "tributaries" sounds a touch too technical :-)... Noticed such words in most of your poems.

Sowmya Chakravarthy said...

Thanks Jose...

Let me know if you have a substitute for "tributeries"... I did not know my poems had technical words...

I am very careful with words... I make sure there is no "garlic in Halwa" so to speak...

But dont hesitate to be critical... You can even write to me...

Anonymous said...

hi!

im one of those internet nomads moving around random pages and refusing to leave my trace anywhere. i dont comment even if i like the stuff i read.

i was looking for "Hugh Prather" and chanced into your blog and then into this post/poem.

i felt compelled to comment.

Sometime back, i came across, over the net, about what one writer (some borges) had said about knives. It goes something like this – “it does not matter how long a knife is. What matters is how close it is to your chest”. A tamil writer(sramakrishnan) used the same metaphor in an interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ3kormDsEI&feature=related) and told that “a book is not by itself good or bad, what matters is how close it is to your heart”.

Your poem has done exactly that to me.

It reminded me of the short story “About Love” by Anton Chekhov. (http://www.classicreader.com/book/1597/1/)

That story runs parallel to your poem.

Thanks! Especially the part about rain and river. Thanks a lot for this poem! I can never forget this poem!!