The Gorging Trains

By Xavier Bage, 22nd May 2013 |Posted in Wikinut

Trains take millions of people to the city before noon. In the evening, they carry the people back to the suburbs and villages. What an extraordinary scene it is even for an ordinary poet like me!

They Eat and Vomit

Oh boy, how the trains gorge,
From wee morning to late night.
Eat and eat, vomit and vomit,
No medicine can set it right.

How can you ever set it right,
If they wish to keep the vice?
Can you keep a fish-lover from
His daily plate of fish and rice?

It grubs in the suburbs in morn,
And pushes it out in the terminus.
In the evening it feeds in the city,
And expels the entrails in villages.

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
It’s neither ingesting nor moving today.
Is there some derailment of digestion,
After loading the belly day after day?

A crowd is standing on the tracks,
Shouting out slogans, holding flags,
“Our bellies are empty and half-filled
When they have money-filled bags.”

                        ***

The Ghost Train

By Xavier Bage, 15th May 2013 | Posted in Wikinut

The railroad from Alipurduar Junction to Buxa Dooars logging station in the northern frontiers of Bengal used to run through a deep forest. It also carried the pleasure seeking colonial officials and their wives to the edge of the Bhutan hills. Today the railroad is closed but the rumbling and whistle of a ghost steam train is still heard at eerie midnights.

The Whistle in the Forest

There used to be a merry metre railroad here,
To the blue hills from the Terai's green plains,
It’s closed now for seventy or eighty years;
You can’t see any of those lean steam trains.

They used to carry timber from Buxa Dooars,
And bring up the whites seeking cool revelry,
In special chair compartments meant only
For the British officials and their fair gentry.

Wild bushes, creepers and thorny berry brambles,
Cover the abandoned lifeless parallel steel lines,
Now abode of foxes, snakes and vampire leeches;
In daylight and when the lonely moon shines.

In the far tea estate quarters the people hear,
The elephants trumpet and jolly jackals howl,
And to answer the call of the heartless hunger;
Cheetahs from the wild quietly visit and prowl.

If you stay in the estate or in a forest bungalow,
Among eerie sounds of the woods at midnights,
A ghostly whistle you’ll hear near the log station;
The rumbling of a train and giggles of the whites.    

                                   

                                    ***

Walk Slowly Sweet Sister Night

By Xavier Bage, 30th Jan 2013 | Posted in Wikinut

I have found that night is the best time to pray for those who are in need of my prayers most.

Prayers from My Pillow

Walk slowly and softly my sweet sister night,
For a little while more I need the silent starlight;
To send my prayers to the holy heaven’s height.

Someone lives a lonely life in a depressed room,
Passing dreary days in bottomless ghostly gloom;
Where no hope sprouts, no buds ever bloom.

Someone is abandoned in deadly dark despair,
Waiting for someone’s tender words of care;
Come they may only if they truly love and dare.

Someone is condemned to nights cruelly cold,
Someone is left to die infirm, hungry and old;
Someone is born free, yet auctioned and sold.

Someone is languishing within hard prison walls,
Where no light enters ever and no blessing falls;
Unjustly incarcerated, where no justice calls.

A grieving mother who has lost all her sons,
No comforts near, in tears her sorrow runs;
Life is a slow death with burdens tied in tons.

Walk slowly dear sister for in need many are-
Of my prayers; some are near some quite far;
Some are traveling now, some caught in a war.

Someone is in pangs of death this very moment,
Someone’s heart is about to be in brute grief rent;
To the mourning let my consoling touch be sent.

Some of them I know well, some only by name,
Some of them I know not but it’s just the same;
In my Lord Saviour’s name all of them I claim.

Walk softly, my dear sister night, walk slowly,
For I’ve to send so very high my prayers lowly;
Ere the day’s duties dictate my mind wholly.

                          ***

The Chapel beside the River

By Xavier Bage, 9th Apr 2013 | Posted in Wikinut

Flowing water holds a magic on me. That's where poetic thoughts pour out and that's where God of my Fathers speaks to me.

That's Where God Speaks to Me

Give me a shade beside a river,
And my heart will begin to sing.
Let me hear the music of water,
And thoughts like bells will ring.

Give me a cosy clump of trees,
And a breeze to caress my hair;
A piece of sky with waving hills,
And vagabond clouds in the air.

Give me the stillness wherein,
God of my Fathers will speak.
It’s Him, my soul is restless for,
It’s Him, my heartbeats seek.

I don’t want them for myself alone,
With so many I have to share.
With extended hands they wait...
For me and for a drop of care.

                     

                +++

The Breeze that Made Me Heaven Bound

By Xavier Bage, 14th Jan 2013 | Posted in Wikinut

I saw five little angels waving to me as I passed by the school playground. What have I done to deserve such a precious gift of heaven?

Five little angels waved to me
As I passed by the school playground
It was a pure joy
That touched me deeply
A breeze that made me heaven bound

I am not their teacher
Neither am I an employee in the school office
I am not a relative of their mother
Nor am I a son of their grandfather
Yet on my heart I experience their tender kiss

I am not an adored film star
Neither am I a television personality
Nor a handsome singer or a dancer winsome
Nor a person of political importance
Nor a celebrity of monetary dignity

What was that they saw in me?
They must have made a mistake
Did they take me for someone else?
Did they wish to cheer a stranger?
To find a reason my mind I rake.

Was it a reward for some humble
Act of kindness long forgotten
For some good turn to a stranger
For a moment spent with a lonely one
For a hand offered to a senior citizen?

It is not given to me to know hows and whys
Of the joys granted graciously
Can I say why someone laid his life for me
Or how was I saved from sure death
By someone so lovingly, so miraculously

I have only to be grateful for ever
As I move on with my life day after day
For all the gifts little or big
Showered on me gratuitously
Can I ever pay?

          ***