I Am Seized By A Strange Desire!
I am seized by a strange desire
That thrusts me through the dizzy darkness
Into ages and ages past to trace
That ancient soul, the very first seed,
That sprouted my lineage aeons ago.
Neither guides nor torches are at hand
To lead me into pitch dark corridors
Of the labyrinthine pathways
With strong stench of dead memories.
I lose my vision a few miles thereon;
Yet I will be on my way, struggles whatever may be.
It seems now as if I am the loftiest leaf
Of a tiniest twig kissing the heavens;
And my journey down below through a maze of
Leaves, branches to main trunk and to root proper
To have a holy meeting with my remotest ancestor look
Both arduous and bleak; yet my urge surges me on.
One by one wakes up from dead to my strong loving calls
And declares one's links to my family chain-
Only three links, one up and one down, is revealed to me;
And by the time I cover more and more distances
I realize that I have my relations in every country
In every caste, creed and religion, professions,
In every strata of societies, in all dialects and languages
In short I find that my blood coursing through
All individuals of all continents of this earth.
My journey is now just half way and I am exhausted
When will I reach my family tree's trunk and root?
Who could be my remotest ancestor, I surmise?
May I call him the God Himself, my remotest Dot!
I drown into deep meditation; then why should there be
Fights amongst siblings of this earth for all silly causes
When we all are from the same apex but sprinkled all over?
Peace settles on me like mist on a mountain on a cool night
O greedy folks, when you fight, think of that one ancestor
Who brought us all and shake your hands, throwing down your conflicts!
poem by Sundaram Chandrakalaadhar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Neglect not meditation
Do exercise; Branches are strong.
Do hatha yoga; Trunk is strong.
Do breathing; Root is strong.
Branch-less, trunk-less,
By root alone too can live a tree.
11.07.2001, Pkd
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
To Ronge
Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men
Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit
The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
Between thee and the weal of Fatherland.
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,
Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear
The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.
Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed
Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.
Servant of Him whose mission high and holy
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,
Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere,
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span;
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here,
The New Jerusalem comes down to man
Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him,
When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb
The rusted chain of ages, help to bind
His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of
the mind
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Leaf And The Tree
When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?
Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb
Is trodden in a little time
By cattle on their way to drink.
The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
That hears the wind and waits its turn,
Have taught it all a tree can learn.
Time can make soft that iron wood.
The tallest trunk that ever stood,
In time, without a dream to keep,
Crawls in beside the root to sleep.
poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The lasting memory.....
ages has witness, the memories of time;
emulate the power of unforgivable happening
stages of life, as it venture the journey that
never come again in every step made
the cooled Siberian moist capture the
hyacinth of the skin, hurry to wait the breezing
air of the heart; each wrinkle the facial dew of
what then the soul reunited in your calling
fascination of reality bestowed
compassion return as what was remember
the evergreen of the sunlight hallucination of
fate, waited to past the haiku of stream in
your coming age, lay down all the card and
disguise your anticipation that everything has
to follow the nature flow
let, each branches fall with the trunk and
leave each leaf touches to the ground, the dirt
has something to say; as a dreaming call,
walk in an abode of shooting star, the night
become the moment of asteroid window of the
future
nay! make me to lay with the branches stay in
the ground without a trunk, my heyday is nothing
but a vague vacuum of me.......
poem by Antonio Liao
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The New World
THE NIGHT that has no star lit up by God,
The day that round men shines who still are blind,
The earth their grave-turned feet for ages trod,
And sea swept over by His mighty wind,
All these have passed away, the melting dream
That flitted o’er the sleeper’s half-shut eye,
When touched by morning’s golden-darting beam;
And he beholds around the earth and sky
That ever real stands, the rolling shores
And heaving billows of the boundless main,
That show, though time is past, no trace of years.
And earth restored he sees as his again,
The earth that fades not and the heavens that stand,
Their strong foundations laid by God’s right hand.
poem by Jones Very
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Dreamers
THEY lingered on the middle heights
Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven;
They whispered, 'We are not the night's,
But pallid children of the even.'
They muttered, 'We are not the day's,
For the old struggle and endeavour,
The rugged and unquiet ways
Are dead and driven past for ever.'
They dreamed upon the cricket's tune,
The winds that stirred the withered grasses:
But never saw the blood-red moon
That lit the spectre mountain-passes.
They sat and marked the brooklet steal
In smoke-mist o'er its silvered surges:
But marked not, with its peal on peal,
The storm that swept the granite gorges.
They dreamed the shimmer and the shade,
And sought in pools for haunted faces:
Nor heard again the cannonade
In dreams from earth's old battle-places.
They spake, 'The ages all are dead,
The strife, the struggle, and the glory;
We are the silences that wed
Betwixt the story and the story.
'We are the little winds that moan
Between the woodlands and the meadows;
We are the ghosted leaves, wind-blown
Across the gust-light and the shadows.'
Then came a soul across those lands
Whose face was all one glad, rapt wonder,
And spake: 'The skies are ribbed with bands
Of fire, and heaven all racked with thunder.
'Climb up and see the glory spread,
High over cliff and 'scarpment yawning:
The night is past, the dark is dead,
Behold the triumph of the dawning!'
Then laughed they with a wistful scorn,
'You are a ghost, a long-dead vision;
You passed by ages ere was born
This twilight of the days elysian.
'There is no hope, there is no strife,
But only haunted hearts that hunger
About a dead, scarce-dreamed-of life,
Old ages when the earth was younger.'
Then came by one in mad distress,
'Haste, haste below, where strong arms weaken,
The fighting ones grow less and less!
Great cities of the world are taken!
'Dread evil rolls by like a flood,
Men's bones beneath his surges whiten,
Go where the ages mark in blood
The footsteps that their days enlighten.'
Still they but heard, discordant mirth,
The thin winds through the dead stalks rattle,
While out from far-off haunts of earth
There smote the mighty sound of battle.
Now there was heard an awful cry,
Despair that rended heaven asunder,
White pauses when a cause would die,
Where love was lost and souls went under,
The while these feebly dreamed and talked
Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven,
Faint ghosts of men who breathed and walked,
But deader than the dead ones even.
And out there on the middle height
They sought in pools for haunted faces,
Nor heard the cry across the night
That swept from earth's dread battle-places.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
To forget one's ancestor's is to be a brook without a source, a tree without root.
The Room
Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf? . . .
For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst
the window:
The great tree took possession.
Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Russell Kincaid
In the last spring I ever knew,
In those last days,
I sat in the forsaken orchard
Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
The hills at Miller's Ford;
Just to muse on the apple tree
With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
Never to grow in fruit.
And there was I with my spirit girded
By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, --
Such phantom blossoms palely shining
Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
Had I been only a tree to shiver
With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
Then I had fallen in the cyclone
Which swept me out of the soul's suspense
Where it's neither earth nor heaven.
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A New leaf
There’s a new leaf upon the Tree
A thousand, thousand have been before
In the life of this great tree
Yet, the Tree rejoices, and is glad
For there is a New Leaf upon the tree
The roots are deep, and hidden
Tis one tree from root to branch
And lives in and through each leaf
The hearts’ smile resurrected
Through the New leaf upon the tree
Like the stars of heaven
New leaves have been many
And so they all are One
For they all share the same root
Bless the New leaf upon the tree
Perfection in the Blessing
Joy released in tears of love
The strength in life will comfort
From root to God above
A New leaf upon the tree
Beauty, Truth, and life
Complete from root to branch
When life’s cycle turns
Leaves fall to nourish roots
And behold, a New leaf upon the tree
poem by Adrian Wait
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Tree-Frog Pedigree
Our great ancestor, Polly Wog,
With her cousin, Thaddeus Pole,
Eloped from her home in an Irish bog,
And crossing the sea on the 'Mayflower's' log,
At the risk of body and soul,
Married a Frog; and thus, you see,
How we come by a place in the family-tree
And the family name, Tree-frog.
poem by John Bannister Tabb
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Dead Leaf
between these two shores
i float like a dead leaf
am not dead either..
if i was i will not feel the pain
budded flowered and became a fruit
on one shore
eaten and as a bare stray seed laid
at the other shore
as a seed i did germinate
the mother root grew into a tree
an off spring flower and fruit came by
all along as a seed i thought i was the tree itself
I NEVER THOUGHT I WILL LOOSE
MY IDENTITY AS A SEED
CAN A TREE SHOW ITS SEED
EVEN IF IT WANTS TO
ALL ALONG...
I thought i was the tree itself
may be i was a part of each part
the stem to hold, the leaf to nourish
till fate wind blew me down as a dead leaf
today as a dead leaf i float
wanting a living from one shore
wanting relationship from the other
as a dead leaf i float..am not dead with pain
ALL ALONG....
I DID THINK I WAS THE TREE ITSELF
BEING JUST A SEED
poem by Samanyan Lakshminarayanan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Immigrant Man
Years pasted by us quick
Lost counting endless days and nights
The family I haven’t seen for years
Because Immigrant to another country
Challenging to survived work and living
No time to think no time to miss the family
Never thought of how much the family missed I
Forgive me I have not been home
For such a long time
But my heart has never left the family
And I have never taken my root away
I missed my country. I missed mostly my family
The family loving caring brought me up
Endlessly guide help and supports
Priceless ticket hearted joy going home
To see my beloved family
Which I haven’t seen for years
To celebrate with the family
This Chinese New Year 2008
Prosperity, Happy living healthy and peace
Miss the happiness time FOUR generations living together
In one house warmest loving and caring
The noise the cries none silences day or night
LOVE and HAPPILY in the heart
Love my root. Love my family
Loving from the bottom of our heart
Prosperity-Happy Chinese New Year
Arrived home 31/01/2008
Celebration Chinese New Year 07/02/2008
By Lee See Fee
poem by See Fee Lee
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Dark Ages
I am coming out of dark ages
And I lived half way through my life
Also I got my hand dirty in the mud a long time ago
I did it and got my tshirt and that job is over
I am coming out of dark ages
Because I spent most of my life in dark ages
And I saw so many dark skies while I went through my life in dark ages
I am coming ou of the dark ages
To help the children in their daily life
By teaching what is right and wrong
Because the children needs to learn what is right and wrong
So they don't became a criminal when they grew up
Because here on earrth are full of criminals already and we have more than What we can handle
I am coming out of the dark ages
To show my love to the children that lives here on the earth with us
I am coming out of the dark ages
Because I want to play with the children everyday here on the earth Because I know that I can make the children happy for once
poem by Aldo Kraas
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Don’t be an uprooted Tree
Seed is sown and the embryo is formed
Legitimate or not, radicle develops into root
Root penetrates into the surface of the soil
Absorbs water and food, turns seed into plant
Inherits the culture of the earth beneath.
It’s in root science that, it moves in
Right direction to fetch the exact need.
Stem gives the support and balance to stand
Branches form the vitality of the plant
Leaves prepare the food to survive
Bearing even odds the plant grows into tree.
As long as deep roots embraces mother earth
The tree shows confidence and attracts.
Location and depth are the might of the tree
Flower, fruit, shade, firm soil, H2O and CO2
Vary from tree to tree, but all owe to root
Never there is an existence beyond this means.
Still human trees surrender under the pressures
Try to get uprooted from the surface and means
Hoping for better flower, fruit, soil and breeze
Truth is, an uprooted tree, a timber, put to ablaze.
-vidi-
22-04-08
poem by Vidi Writes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Tree Telling of Orpheus
White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
&nbs p; I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
&nb sp; of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp;Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; Yet I was not afraid, only
; & nbsp; deeply alert.
I was the first to see him, for I grew
; out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; ; twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
&nbs p; ; more like a flower's.
& nbsp; &n bsp; He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
&nb sp; &nbs p; ; & nbsp;came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
& nbsp; &n bsp; as if rain
; & nbsp; rose from below and around me
& nbsp; &n bsp; instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
& nbsp; I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
; what the lark knows; all my sap
& nbsp; &n bsp; was mounting towards the sun that by now
& nbsp; &n bsp; had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.
; He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
&nb sp; &nbs p; the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! There was no twig of me not
& nbsp; &n bsp; trembling with joy and fear.
Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
& nbsp; &n bsp; came into my roots
&nbs p; ; out of the earth,
&nb sp; &nbs p; into my bark
; & nbsp; out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
&nb sp; gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told me of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
&nbs p; of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots ...
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
&n bsp; and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
; & nbsp; grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.
&n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; ; Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
&n bsp; As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
&nbs p; were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
&nb sp; &nbs p; I was fern in the swamp.
&nb sp; &nbs p; ; & nbsp;I was coal.
poem by Denise Levertov
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Creative Soul Quite Out Of Sorts
creative soul quite out of sorts
are you really source defined
by what you have done?
remembered by what you have written?
does not forest, lakes, rivers,
windswept beaches, ocean tides,
ebb flow in kiwi artistic souls?
do you not hunger starve feel
beginnings are glory dawn chorus
with an eternal day sun bean streams
birth begging come write me?
past writes be they haka or poi songs
lilting lullaby soft night whispered blessings
stretching dark far back to jaw thigh bones
stretch dark far back to ancestor jaw thigh bones
ancestor blessings running sleeping
dream running in waking
eye infant sleep listening...
eye infant ancient sleep listening...
artistic walking time lines
artistic walking seed own time lines
hooks fishing catch spirit minds...
wear colour cloak rainbow bird feathers...
poem by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Sonnet: Roots Matter
Look, how the cut branches and leaves get dried!
Sometimes, this happens when the Sun's too hot;
With roots intact, the trunk sprouts from its side;
The tree uprooted sure to death is fraught.
Look, how the trunk has sprouted green again!
The tree has started growing with revenge;
Almost a miracle is done by rain;
But this is how Nature tries to avenge.
Our Body, mind draw nourishment from soul;
Our soul if pure is habitat for God;
If not, the evil spirits take this role;
A sinful soul in Heaven would look odd?
Good roots matter if habits good flourish;
God's grace matters for Man's soul to nourish.
poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
To be ungrateful is nature
.
Seed to pod, pod to twig,
Twig to stem, stem to root
And root to earth must be grateful
For their existence. Do they?
To be ungrateful is a part of life.
08.08.2006
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Green Bay Tree
'Where is the place of their first fond meeting,
'Where, oh where, is that green bay tree,
'Under whose cover
'The maid and her lover
'Plighted their troth and their constancy?'
O the winter nights were bleak and dreary,
The storms of summer were fierce and free;
Its trunk is shattered,
Its branches are scattered,
O! withered and dead is that green bay tree!
'Where are the lovers who courted its shadow,
'Where, oh where, may those fond ones be?
'The troth which they plighted,
'How is it requited-
'Say, have they forgotten that green bay tree?'
The lover was fickle, and would not remember;
He met with another more fair than she;
For her-broken-hearted,
Her peace hath departed,
The maiden doth fade like the green bay tree!
poem by Charles Mackay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!