How can an intense being be your ‘normal’?
A mad man is intense
He doesn’t live the surface
He can hear the wail of the earth when he walks
On the puddles on the road he finds pool of blood
He can smell an era
He pities the barks of the stray dogs
They can’t sniff his origin
He laughs at your abnormal normalcy
A mad man is the salt of the earth
He observes what you take for granted
He lives what you lost
He laughs at your unreasonable logic
His matted hair is your wild days you forgot
His rags laugh at your fashionable little
You don’t get his language
It is soaked in sensitivity and untainted love
He can see faces frowning from the skies
He likes the flames in words
And laughs when it consumes the book
He can see tears dripping from the words in a book
And the wounds in between
Some words stained with blood
In the cry of a child the roots of pain searches the depths
for water
He finds glazing diamonds in trash cans
He laughs at truth peeping out of his torn clothes
He may brood over the half moon
He feels the pain of words, the pain of being born
His intoxication is neither in a bottle of liquor
Nor in the pursuit of power
His whole body is in trance
He goes drunk by the innocence of a panting face
His dance is not within a song
You can’t hear the incessant music in him
He finds glow worms in the starry sky
He waits in fright for the frogs to cross the road in a
vehicle’s light
He pities your insanity
But doesn’t regret his madness
You can’t reach him; you are a little less normal
-Santhosh Kumar Kana
(Completed during my evening walks at Lazimpat , Uttardhoka and Lainchor,
Kathmandu)
June, 2012
recited by me at the monthly poetry reading session at IACER, Baneswar Heights, Kathmandu on 30th June, Saturday, 2012
The poets at the session:
This poem has been published in the esteemed webjournal MUSE INDIA (issue 49 May-June 2013):
http://museindia.com/regularcontent.asp?issid=49&id=4219
