Tinnitus

By V.M. Kenkre

TINNITUS is a collection of poems written in various styles on diverse topics. Some of them address events in the poet's life, some speak of deep bonds, some celebrate love including for his wife, his family and his dog, some are humorous, and some border on the spiritual. Visual sketches interspersed throughout the book and on the cover are of the author's own creation. The multifaceted personality of the author and his joi de vivre emerge transparently in this unusual, unpretentious and enjoyable offering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781796026504

V.M. Kenkre

Born in idyllic Goa, then a colony of the Portuguese in India, Nitant Kenkre grew up in a family of artists. He was devoted to literature but pursued a scientific career, studying electrical engineering in IIT Bombay and theoretical physics at Stony Brook where he obtained his Ph. D. in 1971. He is a distinguished professor at the University of New Mexico (USA), the founding director of a center in his university dedicated to international collaboration and interdisciplinary research in theoretical physics, and an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His publications include two books and more than 250 articles on his scientific research. He is an international leader in his field and has received many awards for his work. His poetry is direct, accessible, and has a light but obvious philosophical underpinning. For more information see: http://panda.unm.edu/kenkre and http://consortium.unm.edu

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Vasudev M. Kenkre.

ISBN:      Softcover          978-1-4653-5508-9

                Ebook               978-1-7960-2650-4

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.

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Contents

Tinnitus

Writing Poetry

Ceiling Fan

Tchawa

Splitting

Nature’s Plan For Life

Shower

My Neighbor

Said The Horse To The Tree

Worshipper

Demons

Playmate

The Tree

Torments

You Are This Canyon

Death And Sleep

Think Free

What You Need

In Such Wild Hours

Treadmill Test

Fall

Strike Of The Gungnir

Kindness

Sounds Of A Mill

Coming Home With Father

Hidden Button

Midnight

Ahmedabad

Memories

Lie By My Feet

Note On The Mantelpiece

Just A Hungry Child

Computers

Loneliness

Fifty Years Ago, That Day

Visiting Charlotte

The Best Of Both

Return

Self-Made Chains

Don’t Make Them Marionettes

That Man

She Will Stay

Please Don’t Let Them

Quietly By Her

Will Ever?

Addiction

Down There Below

Play?

Watching Planes Land

Breakup In Iambic Meter

Disposal Of My Estates

My Grandson

Extraordinary

To My Granddaughter

Fiction?

My Death Is Near

dedicated with love and gratitude to

S H A I L A

who has inspired several of the poems

and tolerated the rest.

INTRODUCTION

There is a special reason you, the reader, might find this book of greater interest than another offering of poetry. There is a well-known anecdote about the Nobel laureate Dirac who was one of the theoretical physicists who built what is now Quantum Mechanics. He once said to Oppenheimer, who was both a physicist and a poet,

. . . In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand.

In the harsh light of this pronouncement, a physicist dabbling in poetry naturally enters a state of severe trepidation. The present author, having precisely Dirac’s field, theoretical physics, as his professional background, finds himself in such a state. The special interest the following pages might hold for the reader is that, if they fail to give legitimate poetic enjoyment, they are sure to possess potential for providing amusement.

More seriously, I have always agonized over what in reading poetry makes me happy, whether it is the musical content, or more probably the economic and explosive mode of transmittal of emotions or thought. In childhood, I participated in recitals and the memorization that went with the recitals. I believe, however, that my real first contact with poetry came when an older cousin with a literary bent showed me some lines he had composed. I found them beautiful:

When the night’s chariot drives o’er the plain, and puts the sun to flight

How sadly I mourn for the day that is gone, and wish for bright daylight.

That mortals such as he (and why not I) could hope to write was brought home suddenly by that event. Inspired, I struggled with composing. Most of what I wrote was rather poor–little more than the stumbling of a child learning to walk. I wrote again a few years later when, like many