Yayati

P C K Prem

Yayati awakens to a vagrant world
centuries lived and groaned,
he is quite conscious.

Question of youth eternal pester,
carnal bliss seems a dictum,
stout bodies float, thrill in oblivion,
shroud wraps up sick delight,
as darkness sinks into a silhouette
and drifts to perdition.

Yayati’s history is a raison d'être sordid.

Life’s rainbow untied for Kalkin is far away,
Brahmins and the saints
subsidized sadhus’ crowds
babu-netas fall short on time of sunup,
whispers deny
that gods have turned up.

Orphaned and rootless live men,
as sin drips in blood,
godlike swank as if gods
manlike-gods look animals.

Quarrel in elliptical dome pledge inquests
phony blood-dyed lips kill judges
and there is no to frame laws,
in a spring of deceit as it feels
the pulse of times and swap.

Kalkin is not Vaman to conquer the world,
in steps three vague Kalkin winks sadly,
and retreats an old saint.

Nuclear powder yells at prayers sulkily
as Kalkin lands,
finishes sins, no piety exists
as men look beasts.

Yayati’s fresh and virile
beastly men perpetuate sins,
as courtiers dance in circles
with holy judgments.

Judges grieve faintly over
the preordained wisdom
of the East and refuse to do justice.

Foretell visions of fate of seven Angels,
the vials of wrath
beasts belittle gods and add sins
upon lies,
world lives in phials
as men on saucers fly.

God is devils’ fiend, is an ancient myth
a century of neo scientists men,
albeit devils-beasts.

Bodhisattva born in new shape
persists in a fuzzy end.

Men stir as sanity codifies lie
and lust of fleshly tang,
Yayati lifts guilt.

Yayati’s wisdom in vigour prays
in primeval journeys,
with a mild affinity a man lived
for a long time
with imbued fervor,
and so loved women intensely
as erudition and love stayed timeless,
beyond epochs.

Father egoist with a loyal son
but Puru refuses youth
to agonized Yayati,
and sins ache where illusion fosters weird ties.

If Yuyutsu is born for the cause
of humanity
and finishes sinners as he inherits holocaust,
it could turn into a blessing
a godly living may be ‘ohm shanti ohm.’

Machines in men live now
with nuclear fears
guns and perdition,
lofty summit’s writ in gloom
as a finish lacks
ancient Yayati
a beast’s man finds Yayati
in android,
an incongruity in coinage.

Twin leeway in living
where Yayati’s loss is cosmic
psychic robot-rulers tainted
think of wellbeing of ‘the self’,
as sinning beasts’ men scoff
as it is a relegated devils’ tavern
and an exalted dome.

Wicked sagacity rolls out
fecund love for people,
as relations with masses con portico
for safety trap,
masquerading prolongs wearily
to make living difficult.

Words in leisure mask themes
wait for followers
and no will enforces goodness,
carnage escalates in reigns
of Yayatis of the millennium.

Postures hold the spirit of age,
and the century begins
as slashed off in the middle.

Brusque cry for the crown
of a polluted world,
of robot or a man
or if Yayati admits,
fills ears with venom.

Century sustains beasts in Yayatis
a mere cultural syndrome
in modern’s media blitz
whets tongues for urban ecstasy,
and die in crematorium
with an epitaph first,
and here dwells an ego large.

Avaricious town in gay mind-set,
and tragic quaysides
when today’s Oedipus denies father
a name
as a requiem it is perfect
and writes death of an age,
for relations fade away
even before the autumn sets in.

Absurd postures and stinking grooves
make living wretched,
when generic deformity looks awful,
stoic elites’ culture a falsity
for animals’ bliss,
fabled existence plunges into chasm deep,
and feigns life,
in a world of dry rains
and shade-less bivouac.

Here joins future that forgets past
a certainty frozen in the vortex of lust,
safety chaotic in domes,
where a vengeance is inflicted,
on life with periods of confusing time.

Fears of death scatter defense
when life breathes perils
Yayati dead worried long ago
lets in yearning for life again
and it is an impossibility of rebirth,
a man insists on life without an aim.

He may rescue a man
if Pitamaha stalls a birth
of a man,
consigned to self-pity
in an era inappropriate
when atomic threat appears
in shadows
to stunned and saddened man.

Yayati goes past the image
and a man lives
as a fossilized being,
and in a flitting life profile
Yayati struggles
to reinvent destiny,
beyond seizing life as God envisioned
in the beginning of the world,
of profound confusion in fostering
of identity
a mystical puzzle it is
Amen!

P C K Prem (P C Katoch of Garh-Malkher, Palampur, Himachal, a former Academician, Civil Servant and Member PSC HP, Shimla), an author of more than sixty books (English and Hindi) is a Poet, Novelist, Short Story Writer and a Critic in English and Hindi from Himachal, India.