Thursday, April 01, 2010

Perfect Eight


Hope, was never there
It was I
Who hoped, that there was hope.
Finally the bubble burst.
I sat still for a while.
‘What is the date today?’, I asked,
As I usually do;
Wondering if the numbers added up to eight,
This time too.
‘It is the 26th’.
Indeed, it is the number eight,
The unlucky number,
With which I was born.
Perfect.

Hope, I now hope,
Will die, at last
And set me free
From its mooring
To go elsewhere.
Anywhere.
Actually, nowhere.


7 comments:

Rishi said...

The way I understand hope is that it never dies. Its born everyday in a new avataar. That is enough to pull along forever.

Rishi

Pramod Shankar said...

Let hope fade, hide, wane, disguise... as long as it doesn't die, life's worth it! Did I see an (uncharacteristic) shade of darkness in this piece?

Sowmya Chakravarthy said...

Rishi, Pramod,

We are all fools. Sometimes, we hope for the impossible, though we know it is the 'impossible'.

It is good when 'such hope' is killed.

For hope to be born in new avatar, the old avatar has to die.

Hemanth said...

Why the criticality in judging Human Nature? As I see it...Hope isn't just an emotion but strength that moves mankind toward progress. Hope is Pandora's last gift to man...though born of a mistake. In the 1960s...a mere TV Science Fiction series embedded Hope in man's heart...and today we have mobile phones, touch screens and a tricorder.....the ISS is a reality. Such is the power of Hope...and of Life :-)

Anonymous said...

Breaking prose into small and big sentences and call it poetry has become a cliche, nowadays. Adding a philosophical touch to those lines is considered an intellectual act too. What die there is poor poetry. A poetic approach to literature is an act that kills intelligence and nurtures the heart.

For instance, a few lines of John Donne:


Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Shankaran er said...

Sowmya,
Nice work.It's a perfect poetry.But the content is totally wrong.Without hope , humanity would be stagnated and died in the forest itself in the very beginning.Hope is the key to unlock ur powers.

anyway the work is good :)

castle said...

It's me again. I just left a comment on another of your poems... 'Tantalization'. So what happens? I choose this one to look at next, and what do I see? I see the same theme. I see you calling unrequited love 'hope'.
Why are you banging my head with this? Never mind, I just got the answer. You're banging my head with it because the curse of unrequited love is based on hope. If hope was to die, you would be swimming in that which you hoped for. Wow! I'm guessing time would stop. You would become lost. The cosmos would have an orgasm. You might even explode.
I guess this whole subject has somehow led to the term 'hopeless romantic'. This term has led me to understand that a 'hopeless romantic' is not one that is without hope, but rather one who is hopelessly filled with hope that will not go away.
Once again, I've been inspired! Thank goodness I have the ability to limit my inspiration...

"I slept with hope last night...
Now what?"

Here's what(kinda' like a summation)...you're swimming in your dream...time stops...you become lost...the cosmos has an orgasm...you explode...and once again you are stardust.