Holi Festival of Colors: Part 1

In 2009, I began to write poetry on the history, culture and heritage, and arts on India.  I meant it to be a comprehensive accounting and multiple volume set, that I titled Outsider Eyes, Insider Soul.  After all, I was Filipino-American, and I was writing about a country I had never visited.  I was, however, among a thriving Indian community in Dubai, and made friends with a good many I met.

I was duly enthralled.

Here is one poem in the collection:

(image credit)

Hiranyakashipu

It was a deal of a lifetime I struck –

          For my penance, invincibility.

For no one could, in any kind of luck,

          Kill me, for they are fallibility

Exquisitely defined by Shakespeare’s Puck

          With his retort “what fools these mortals be!”

Holika

Dear brother, king of demons, start the fire –   

          This fateful night will soon be raging light.

Your son and I shall sit atop the pyre

          With this shawl draped on me to let me fight

Off death like many insects on the wire,

          For soon my nephew will be burning bright.

Prahlad

No worries, here.  Do what you will.  The powers

          Lord Vishnu gives to me is bound in love,

Devotion, truth and honesty, in bowers

          Made with the holiest of hand in glove.

I pray to him, regardless of the hours,

          Whatever plot you may be thinking of. 

Holi Festival of Colors: Part 1 © Ron Villejo