Homesickness

Photo: Barbie Robinson

Hoary fingers tremble on my shoulder.

I whirl into remembrance

and its abyss of longing.

I am homesick for an ancient scent

of a field where Body returned

to boundless autopoiesis.

Aching for home is Reality’s first-born:

the first poem that unfetters

my bounded realms of what is and what is not.

In trembling homesickness I mirror

Beginning and its mysterious disorder.

I hurl my longing-tipped missiles.

Why have I feared this lament?

Why did I flee its fragile purge?

Why do I worship Gods who don’t yearn?

Don’t rob me of my tears!

They unleash me from the paralysis

of weaponless servitude.

Missile of perception. Missile of heart.

Missile of hymn. Missile of invocation.

This ache is mother of all weapons.

Those that dare disarm me

may they be undefended

in their tearless, weaponless deserts.

-Padma Menon

This poem is inspired the Vedic “Vena” which is translated as longing, remembrance, homesickness, and love. This sensation is the archetypal birthplace of poetic intelligence. It is the foundation of a perception of Reality as a poetic composition. The imagery in the poem is from the ancient hymns of Vena. Based on the my original interpretation of the text and on the text and translation by R L Kashyap.