SAPPHIRE HOUSE POEMS FOR CHORAL RECITATION

1.COROMANDEL FISHERS – SAROJINI NAIDU

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the
morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child
that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our
catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the
kings of the sea!

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the

sea gull's call,
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the
waves are our comrades all.
What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the
hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his
breast our lives.

Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent

of the mango grove,
And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the
sound of the voices we love;
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the
dance of the wild foam's glee;
Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the
low sky mates with the sea.

2.A LOST FRIEND, I NEVER HAD. -RENU NAYYAR

Amidst plastic faces & concrete jungles,
A sedentary lifestyle & corporate bungles
I thought I got lucky to find;
A sparkling Gem one day, in life!
A Gem not just precious; but I thought, was so rare
To whom my heart, soul & mind; I could bare
Someone who could touch my heart with a little care
And penetrate my soul to do the dare!
Someone to walk with me, a couple of miles
And bestow upon me, a million smiles!
I ask myself, "Is this a dream or a nightmare
I am yet to awaken from?"
As I seek a friend, I never found
Like A Lost Friend, I Never Had!
Stupid was I, to believe that friendship exists
Between two strangers, who meet at the cross-roads of
life
To eventually pass-by & never to look back again!
I beg not to deprive me of this moment
For a life that is otherwise so dormant!
Yet, I continue to yearn for him even today
When I know pretty well, he was never mine!
For I know not, what it means to hide?
How I feel deep inside!
So, do not ridicule me; I am yet to realize,
That I Lost A Friend, I Never Had!

3.THE GIFT OF INDIA – SAROJINI NAIDU

Is there aught you need that my hands withhold,
Rich gifts of raiment or grain or gold?
Lo! I have flung to the East and West
Priceless treasures torn from my breast,
And yielded the sons of my stricken womb
To the drum-beats of duty, the sabres of doom.
Gathered like pearls in their alien graves
Silent they sleep by the Persian waves,
Scattered like shells on Egyptian sands,
They lie with pale brows and brave, broken hands,
They are strewn like blossoms mown down by chance
On the blood-brown meadows of Flanders and France.
Can ye measure the grief of the tears I weep
Or compass the woe of the watch I keep?
Or the pride that thrills thro’ my heart’s despair
And the hope that comforts the anguish of prayer?
And the far sad glorious vision I see
Of the torn red banners of Victory?
When the terror and tumult of hate shall cease
And life be refashioned on anvils of peace,
And your love shall offer memorial thanks
To the comrades who fought in your dauntless ranks,
And you honour the deeds of the deathless ones
Remember the blood of thy martyred sons!

4.TONIGHT – AGHA SHAHID ALI

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your

spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”

“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—

A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—

All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;

Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities

multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.

He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been

smashed.
No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day

—
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.

Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer

fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?

This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—

God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

5. A DIFFERENT HISTORY – SUJATA BHATT

Great Pan is not dead;
he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot,
a sin to slam books down
hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.

Which language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.

6. LIGHT, OH WHERE IS THE LIGHT?- BY RABINDRANATH

TAGORE
Light, oh where is the light? Kindle it with the burning
fire of desire!

There is the lamp but never a flicker of a flame,—is such

thy fate, my heart! Ah, death were better by far for
thee!
Misery knocks at thy door, and her message is that thy
lord is wakeful, and he calls thee to the love-tryst
through the darkness of night

The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is

ceaseless. I know not what this is that stirs in me,—I
know not its meaning.

A moment's flash of lightning drags down a deeper

gloom on my sight, and my heart gropes for the path to
where the music of the night calls me.

Light, oh where is the light! Kindle it with the burning

fire of desire! It thunders and the wind rushes
screaming through the void. The night is black as a
black stone. Let not the hours pass by in the dark.
Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

7. REHABILITATION – SHANKHA GHOSH

Whatever I had around me
Grass and pebbles
Reptiles
Broken temples
Whatever was around me
Exile
Folklores
Solitary sunset
Whatever was around me
Landslides
Arrows and spears
A homestead
All shiver with their faces turned west.
Memories are like a serpentine crowd
Under the mango trees, broken boxes
One step denying another
And suddenly all are homeless.
Whatever is around me
Sealdah station
High noon
Pockmarked walls
Whatever is around me
Blind alleys
Slogans
The Monument
Whatever is around me
The bed of arrows
Lamp-posts
The Ganges flowing red
The bones and the darkness within
Surround them all
Inside a tune plays on
The Howrah Bridge is holding up high
The void
Under my feet drifts Time.
Whatever is fountain around me
Flying hair
Naked path
The stormy torch
Whatever is transparent around me
The sound of the dawn
The body after a bath
The Shiva of the cremation ground
Whatever is death around me
Each day
A thousand days
A birthday
All return in the palms of memory
As the beggar who sits in the fading dusk
What was and what remains,
Two flintstones that scrape each other
And ignite my daily rehabilitation.

8. AFTER DEATH: Twenty Years - Birendra

Chattopadhyay
All the terrible catastrophes
Escaped your eyes
You did not burn in the tortuous fire of '46
The famine and the epidemic
That came through the blood
The land where sons killed each other
The flesh of mothers
Fueled a living hell.
You did not have to see
The '47 Partition that was
Worse than madness in Lumbini.
Contrary to these experiences,
A light of humanity had filled your life, Poet.
We too had learnt to dream from you.
These past twenty years
A history of sewage afloat,
Thirst, a bath, life, all inhuman.
Worse than the old hag
Who runs the brothels at Shonagachi.
Ministers, leaders, teachers, writers, students,
Dogs on heat,
This independent land joins all together.
All our dreams are like drunken jokes
Played on the reeds of an oft-used harmonium.
Even in your nightmares
You had not thought such calamity
Would befall this free country
You had thus remained true
To your dreams of humanity.

9. MY DEAD DREAM – BY SAROJINI NAIDU

HAVE YOU found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons
ago
You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow.
Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from
your sleep
And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep?
Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green
garlands of leaves?
Would you scare the white, nested, wild pigeons of joy
from my eaves?
Would you touch and defile with dead fingers the robes
of my priest?
Would you weave your dim moan with the chantings of
love at my feast?

Go back to your grave, O my Dream, under forests of

snow,
Where a heart-riven child hid you once, seven eons ago.
Who bade you arise from your darkness? I bid you
depart!
Profane not the shrines I have raised in the clefts of my
heart.