Monochrome
I don't usually post poems on my blogs but this one is special to me. It's written by me but it is not for me. So here goes -
Look at that face; look just look
like the darkened sky on a sunny noon
and all that the darkness took
left with only grey clouds and a fractured moon.
The grandeur of the mind
that now lies forgotten.
The sunshine that one cannot find
deep inside you just feel rotten.
No one knows, what you and I do.
No one knows how or why.
They say they care; sure they do,
by the day it starts becoming another lie.
It has started to rain yet once again
but only the water knows that it is acid
which has burned the heart and the brain
and that face remains ever so placid.
Day in and day out the beloved calls
to seek the comfort in his heavenly abode.
Each day for this trap we fall
for, there is duskiness which we can't' unload.
Just like the blind sees the earth
in complete monochrome,
for us too there is no dearth
of the different shades of black that we now call home.
If it would have been almost any other poem I may not have explained it the way I'm going to explain this one but as I said earlier, this poem is special.
First thing first, if anyone has done class 12th from CBSE then the first stanza would look vaguely familiar. It was inspired by 'My mother at 66' by Kamala Das. In fact, that simple piece inspired me beyond just the first stanza. The second line presents a paradox because obviously, a dark sky can not exist with a sunny sky. The sun may help in creating shadows but it does not bring in darkness. Even when the sun goes down, the moon is not perfect. It is broken to an extent that it can not be repaired. To hide the fracture, grey clouds cover it up.
In the second stanza, I talk about the sunshine which has faded and is lost. Sunlight is one of the key factors that keeps a plant alive and helps in nurturing it. Same thing with the mind. Without that sunshine or the ray of hope, everything feels lost and dead. The mind does not only feels it but also starts believing it. It blocks everything else completely and becomes a thing of the past.
In the third stanza, there is a secret being shared. A sad one really between the mind and the world which is a hypocrite. The one thing that everyone else is good at is lies, plain blatant lies.
For the fourth stanza, I've used rain. Rain, of course, is the most beautiful form of symbolism. It reflects happiness and sadness, pain and healing etc. A whole range of emotions can be showcased using the rain. Here I've used rain to represent tears which never stop. The rain is acidic (keeping in mind the increasing amount of pollutants in the sky XP) which burns away all other emotions.
The fifth stanza has one of my favorite usage of symbolism. I used the word 'beloved'. Some people could probably make out from heavenly abode that beloved has something to do with God. It indeed is a synonym for God in this poem. I've borrowed the idea from Sufism where the pir or murshid was the beloved of his followers. For their disciples, the Sufi saints were the utmost beloved and they were bonded by a force called ishq.Upon death, the soul of Sufi saints is believed to have merged with the ultimate lover, God. In this stanza, the mind believes in the illusion that the beloved has created for him, to come to him and join him back in heaven.
In the final stanza, you can find the inspiration and motivation behind the title of the poem, 'Monochrome'. The blind sees the world in only one colour - black. Similarly, people with depression see everything around them in varying shades of black. They become accustomed to the web of melancholy that they somehow have trapped themselves in and that is why it is so difficult to cope with depression because niether you can come out of the web nor break it.
Look at that face; look just look
like the darkened sky on a sunny noon
and all that the darkness took
left with only grey clouds and a fractured moon.
The grandeur of the mind
that now lies forgotten.
The sunshine that one cannot find
deep inside you just feel rotten.
No one knows, what you and I do.
No one knows how or why.
They say they care; sure they do,
by the day it starts becoming another lie.
It has started to rain yet once again
but only the water knows that it is acid
which has burned the heart and the brain
and that face remains ever so placid.
Day in and day out the beloved calls
to seek the comfort in his heavenly abode.
Each day for this trap we fall
for, there is duskiness which we can't' unload.
Just like the blind sees the earth
in complete monochrome,
for us too there is no dearth
of the different shades of black that we now call home.
If it would have been almost any other poem I may not have explained it the way I'm going to explain this one but as I said earlier, this poem is special.
First thing first, if anyone has done class 12th from CBSE then the first stanza would look vaguely familiar. It was inspired by 'My mother at 66' by Kamala Das. In fact, that simple piece inspired me beyond just the first stanza. The second line presents a paradox because obviously, a dark sky can not exist with a sunny sky. The sun may help in creating shadows but it does not bring in darkness. Even when the sun goes down, the moon is not perfect. It is broken to an extent that it can not be repaired. To hide the fracture, grey clouds cover it up.
In the second stanza, I talk about the sunshine which has faded and is lost. Sunlight is one of the key factors that keeps a plant alive and helps in nurturing it. Same thing with the mind. Without that sunshine or the ray of hope, everything feels lost and dead. The mind does not only feels it but also starts believing it. It blocks everything else completely and becomes a thing of the past.
In the third stanza, there is a secret being shared. A sad one really between the mind and the world which is a hypocrite. The one thing that everyone else is good at is lies, plain blatant lies.
For the fourth stanza, I've used rain. Rain, of course, is the most beautiful form of symbolism. It reflects happiness and sadness, pain and healing etc. A whole range of emotions can be showcased using the rain. Here I've used rain to represent tears which never stop. The rain is acidic (keeping in mind the increasing amount of pollutants in the sky XP) which burns away all other emotions.
The fifth stanza has one of my favorite usage of symbolism. I used the word 'beloved'. Some people could probably make out from heavenly abode that beloved has something to do with God. It indeed is a synonym for God in this poem. I've borrowed the idea from Sufism where the pir or murshid was the beloved of his followers. For their disciples, the Sufi saints were the utmost beloved and they were bonded by a force called ishq.Upon death, the soul of Sufi saints is believed to have merged with the ultimate lover, God. In this stanza, the mind believes in the illusion that the beloved has created for him, to come to him and join him back in heaven.
In the final stanza, you can find the inspiration and motivation behind the title of the poem, 'Monochrome'. The blind sees the world in only one colour - black. Similarly, people with depression see everything around them in varying shades of black. They become accustomed to the web of melancholy that they somehow have trapped themselves in and that is why it is so difficult to cope with depression because niether you can come out of the web nor break it.
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