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I have come to bear, take with me unappetizing impression,
seriousness of backward leanings surrounding us all the time,
all the days, all the months, all the years,
leave amidst these very surroundings
looking beseechingly at the days
of the past.
“My father, tell me when would you trust me? Why don’t you
trust me? Why you mistrust your own trust?” yells Oscar M.
Calming him down I say, My friend Oscar M,
dichotomies cannot be spelt out, though the meaning of such
dichotomies spins itself out, several times a day,
keeping the meaning within itself.
Silence, silence……
no ifs and no buts…….
only silence, silence only.
Silence makes my noisy voice noisier……..
We live amidst decisive indecisions
or …………………indecisive decisions------
trying to make out, what stands out behind us
is a shallow shadow of ours or effortlessness
reflected in our restlessness.
We go, side by side, I tell Oscar M, just like men and women
go in funerals lamenting the departure of the dead and awaiting,
welcomingly the arrival of the unknown.
Relationship between the dead
and unknown,
a relationship between silence
and greater silence.
At the rear of the stage, a madman rushes towards God hoping
to destroy him; further no new world would emerge; none would
fiddle with anyone else.
His dry face is tearless; memory eloping fast. A madman,
seeing no sense in Dr Steiner’s advice, “Eat no eggs.”
Oscar M, don’t you know what dissolves an intellectual’s thinking? I ask.
Chattering evenings spent on silent, empty coffee tables over sips
of endless musings over endless matters having no significance;
torments loiter around.
PS - Oscar M is a student Franz Kafka talks about in his famous Diaries. In Diaries Oscar M emerges for the first time on 21st Febraury 1911. So does Dr Steiner. On my second reading of Diaries, I noticed how constrained, superimposed relationships (here between father and son) can destroy a human being. This poem is written, inspired by my perceptions of Oscar M.
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