Optics and Lasers in Engineering

Morning Sermons

Ecstasy fills your morning sermons,
And words flow from your beak
Like bullets from a machine gun
At a frightful cadence that belies
Your tiny size with two tender eyes.

Your freewheeling words tear asunder
My early morning sleep ritual
That allows me to soak in the miseries
Of our planet and its inhabitants,
Elevating me like an icon.

Yet I dream to see the world
From your perspective by undoing
Your uncombed melodious flow
To understand why you speed up,
Alas, to slow down all too hastily.

Your escapades are legendary.
You fly from one end of the globe
To the other, noting in detail
Different colours of human misery
Which you store in your memory.

Even if I do not understand your sermons,
There is no divergence in our positions,
And that's such an enlightened feeling.
Coming from the tree next to my house
The tonalities in your chirps heal me.

History in the Making

By Pramod Rastogi

Clio, Muse of History, Painting by
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1656). Courtesy: Creative Commons

History has a long past, shrouded
In layers of the mist of Time,
Most of which is unseen in a museum. 
History has a future vast as an ocean.

Of times whose tides are frontline,
We are in the middle of the flow
Between a past catching up on us
And a future we are catching up to.  

We must dig deep in the gaping ruins 
To perceive all that remains cloaked 
In the halls of maligned controversies, 
In tune with ruling elites of the times.  

Painted dark might be the white,
And painted white might be the black,
This is how history is entrenched
And has seen snowflakes fall in the Sahara.

The past is in the jaws of the present
Which is incessant in its slither
Into the jaws of a future, rather nebulous, 
To drag it into the past sliding behind.

A lava of tears flows down the cheeks  
Of history as we wield its resolute truth 
Until it remains a shadow of itself.
It sheds one last tear and sails on.

Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the EPFL, Switzerland. He is a poet, academician, researcher, author of nine scientific books, and a former Editor-in-chief (1999-2019) of the international scientific journal, Optics and Lasers in Engineering. He has published over ninety poems in international literary journals.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International