Adrift, Ashore: A Man’S Quest for His Lost Song

By bala

Adrift, ashore is a poetic tale of a mans journey in search of his lost song. The song is a metaphor for all that he longs for, to be free as a bird, to flow as a river, to be rooted as a tree, to hold on to ones own mystery as the moon, to be still as a mountain and to travel both inwards & outwards as the sea.

In this pilgrimage towards his song, he encounters these very natural elements that reflect his inner state - a cuckoo, a river, a banyan tree, the moon, a mountain and the sea. He opens his heart out to them, explaining with great feeling, his loss and his longing. They in turn offer him words of wisdom that comfort and guide him towards his song and himself.

Adrift, ashore is a poetic tale in six chapters, each one a deep, personal and spiritual conversation about the souls journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482852158

bala

My life has been a journey of discovering his life’s purpose, of learning how to spend my life more and more meaningfully. A road in this journey has taken me towards using communication to create positive social change through Centre of Gravity, an organisation I co-founded in 2005. Another road, a more winding one, has taken me inwards, towards a discovery of my own voice through poetry. My influences in writing range from Tagore to Rilke, Steinbeck to Marquez, but it is the poetry of Pablo Neruda that taught me to write and write with fire in my heart. My poetry covers a range of subjects from love to cities to artists to spiritual quests. I hope, my poetry can help readers celebrate life for what it is and offer them a ray of light when they find themselves in the darkness. Adrift, ashore is my second book -- Bala

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Copyright © 2016 by Balaji Gopalan.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-5216-5

                eBook           978-1-4828-5215-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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To those who know the way

To those who show the way

‘Who is blessed, master?’

‘Blessed is the one who knows his song,

for he knows himself.’

‘Who is cursed, master?’

‘Cursed is the one who loses his song,

for it is not easily found.’

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Such is life.

Such is life.

As the motif of a song

repeats itself with greater force,

life returns me over and over

to the same moments

with greater urgency.

The bridges I walk away from

are the bridges I am placed against.

The mirrors I turn away from

are the mirrors I am made to look into.

So I arrived

where I have arrived so often.

At the edge of the city.

At the threshold of a forest.

This, I must say.

I had no intentions

of embarking on fearsome adventures,

of making prolonged voyages into the unknown.

I had no grand plans

of gathering fantastic tales

to tell upon my return to awestruck strangers.

All I wanted to see

was a glimpse of my own sky.

All I wanted to hear

was a note of my own song

long forgotten.

I wondered what the forest

had in store for me.

What doors may it open

for a few fleeting moments?

What doors may it close,

never to open again?

This too, I must say.

In all my travels now and then,

here and beyond,

I collected nothing more than

the wind in my hair,

the dust in my sleeves,

the rain in my pocket.

Why should this be any different?

But then, why shouldn’t this be?

With trembling doubts

and longings long suppressed,

I strayed into the forest,

dense with leaves, roots, worms,

anthills, and birds.

Before long, I was as lost

in the ways of the forest

as I was in the ways of the world.

It was then that I heard

the call of a cuckoo.

I followed its song

to the tree where it sat singing

lost in its own melody.

Amidst the rise and fall

of its trills, I could hear

the whispers of my own hope.

Maybe it could help me

find my way in this forest,

in that world, even.

Who knows?

Who really knows life

before it begins to unfold?

The cuckoo stopped its singing

and looked at me, slanting its head,

as though I were an intruder

in its chamber of music.

It addressed me in a tone

that revered musicians

reserve for the tone-deaf.

‘Who are you, if I may ask?