Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Poems and Whimsies in Celebration of Love, Life and Death

By Pikomoku

The poems Miles To Go Before I Sleep. were written after the author suffered a close to death experience on massive radiation of a large tumor his pelvis. The liver, riddled with cancer, had begun to fail due to the toxicity of the radiation. The experience has been recorded in his book Dont tell me Im Going to Die: Reflections on my Terminal Cancer

Scraps and pieces of previous scribblings that were to going to be consigned to the wastepaper basket were retrieved and magically transformed themselves into what has been described as a wondrous journal.

None of these poignant poems in celebration of Love, Life and Death would have come to light if it had not been for the cancer eliciting in an intense and penetrating light on a foreshortened life.

The book also contains a short story of the authors search for his own blindness--his inability to see things as they are, and his work with the blind farmers in India that gave him an insight into his own limitations. The photographs he took accompanied by short poetic phrases make this living experience a fit sequel to the poems that illumine a unique vision and way of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465325181

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Copyright ©2010 by Pikomoku.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Cover image: "Autumn scene on the living room wall of Pikomoku’s home in

Burlington, Canada"

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35376

Contents

FEROZE MOOS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

WHAT IS POETRY?

THE MAKING OF A POEM

IN SEARCH OF YAÖMÉ

DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION

MIGRATIONS

SAYINGS TO MY CHILDREN

WHIMSIES

IN SEARCH OF MY BLINDNESS

IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST VILLAGER

I ASK FOR GRACE

To

Yaömé

Paoputzu

Shunya

Laila Shehra

and Zöe

WHERE DO THESE POEMS COME FROM?

Not me, but the heart that pulses my heart

the eye that sees through my eye

the mind that moves my mind

the life that breathes through my life.

The presence of past lives, perhaps

a forgotten childhood

the trauma of finding and losing myself.

And now this brief miracle

like life itself, incurable

a bright interlude that consumes me.

PIKOMOKU

I call these Sayings, to be said, not read in silence on a page. Words, like music, intuitively transform reality, and need the lilt and pause of the voice to touch our emotions.

FEROZE MOOS

My dad emigrated with my mother, sister, and brother, to Canada in 1970.

Born in India, 1932, he studied Natural Sciences at King’s College, Cambridge, and took to reading religion, anthropology and mythology. As Honorary Director of the National Association of the Blind in India for many years, he trained blind villagers to be farmers, and wrote a story and poems about those branded by the stigma of fate. Facing life with metastasized liver cancer, he has written this journal entitled: Miles to go before I sleep, Poems and whimsies celebrating Love, Life and Death, published in a limited edition for his friends. The poems came to life in December 2003, from scraps. He has now finished another journal, Don’t tell me I’m going to die, reflections on my terminal cancer, describing the cancer in him and the cancer out there: The governments and institutions driven by commerce and expediency that hold a defenseless population hostage, destroying lives. It’s a spiritual odyssey of human insouciance transformed by life giving poetry.

Like many others, my Dad made a living wandering through the labyrinths of a corporate world, appalled and disillusioned by the brutal way human beings plundered the earth and exploited each other. His novel Cephalo spins a bizarre dystopian fantasy of a man riddled with cancer attempting to survive in a world of callousness and self-betrayal, in search of his soul.

My Dad has forty tumors in his liver, others in his sacrum, pelvis, spine and ribs. Doctors don’t know how or why he is still alive with this malign disease that appeared in 1998, and recurred after his liver resection in early 2001. On several occasions he’s been told nothing can be done, and has responded, saying I shall not die, till I have conquered death. So to share the anguish of his grace with others, help them stay alive and cherish their loves.

Dad was called Piko by his Dad, and is called Pikomoku by his granddaughter Zoe. He feels these names, especially Pikomoku, more akin to his inward nature.

SUNYATTA

My gratitude to Sunyatta, and to Adi and Dhun Irani for having spent hours helping me put this book together

                  Pikomoku

35376-MOOS-layout.pdf

Pikomoku

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Had it not been for my beloved wife, Shireen, whose love and devotion have kept me alive, and my daughters Sunyatta and Laila, my brother Ronny, and my dear son Fram, these creations would never have come to life.

Sunnyatta, my daughter, published the first version of the poems Miles to Go for me. My son Fram wrote May you find completion and peace in this, your endeavour . May others find immortality in your wish, this endeavour, your life.

I am deeply indebted to Adi Irani who has taken pains create these manuscripts with patience and skill, dear loving friends Sandi Bloomfield, Anita Stern, Jane George and Adi dastoor, who have spent time editing the narratives, and Robert Gover, my mentor, who taught me how to write a novel.

I especially want to thank Cyrus for having creating a site fraavashibooks.com, a labour of love, to display these creations on the internet.

Feroze

WHAT IS POETRY?

The heart has its reasons the reason cannot know, said Blaise Pascal. Add, the soul has its dark places the heart cannot probe. Only the depths of the sea can know the depths of the sea, the aridity of desert know the aridity that gnaws at its bones. The poetry that appeals to me, defies reason and dogma, good and evil, saying what frees us from our shackles. Only so can it express the paradoxical and tragic truth we all have to live with: Love, life and death, as one.