On an ancient land
Lived a King Mandymandias
Proud and self-believing
Like Shelley’s ‘great’ Ozymandias.
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, a renowned poet and writer from Chandigarh, India, shares his mystic poetry
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, based in Chandigarh, is an Indian poet and scholar credited with 170 plus books of English literature, philosophy and spirituality. He won great Serbian Award Charter of Morava and his name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He was honored with Seneca Award LAUDIS CHARTA by Academy of Arts & Philosophical Sciences, Bari, Italy 2024. He is Founder President of the International Academy of Ethics and conferred Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) by University of Engineering & Management, (UEM) Jaipur. Email anandjs55@yahoo.com
Biblio-link: https://sites.google.com/view/bibliography-dr-jernal-singh/home
MANDYMANDIAS
(An Ode to Ozymandius)
On an ancient land
Lived a King Mandymandias
Proud and self-believing
Like Shelley’s ‘great’ Ozymandias
Once passing through a mountainous range
He was struck with a strange thought
He found a challenge to his wisdom
In each proud and lofty Rock
All the wisdom is epitomized
In the King
Where is the need to have
A separate wisdom and this bearing proud?
Each mountain spoke differently
In language which the King didn’t know
They said beautiful things
But it did heartburns to the Proud Fellow.
How can they speak more beautifully
And more meaningfully than I
Their King!
How can they him defy?
The king ordered the mountains
To be cut down
And brought to the level
Of the earth, to a common renown.
Why? A courtier asked.
Remove him from my eyes
Was the order
And he was made a bullet’s fodder.
Now all the mountains were gone
It was plains, with anego small,
And Mandymandius appeared
To be head and shoulders above it all.
Thus the King removed all differentness
Which caused him pain.
Form a Hill state,
It was now reduced to a city in the Plain.
And looking at the fate of mountains
Do ye know what happened to the grass?
Men lost their individuality
And they were reduced to a shadowy mass.
Afraid of showing their face
Lest the King’s men spot them
They are identified, and Kingly action
Reduced them to a fiction.
***
THE INVISIBLE LEVELLER
It was not easy to stay in existence
More than men, or animals,
Winds attack you
The ecosystem that supports you
Also pulls at our legs
To keep us from acquiring
A status higher than the ordinary.
Remain humble and praying
To the Invisible leveller
Who lets us desire the moon,
But knows
How to scuttle your flight
And bring you down.
Every man who desires joy
Is in the bad books of angels
Who marks him
As a potential candidate
Who can in his passion create
Convulsions to the Megastate
Gods perhaps felt repentant
After giving the tree of knowledge
Reports of his evolution from
The monkey came a bit late
Before that,
Gods had already conceived the idea of fate.
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