Theme by Kota Neelima

What The Eyes Can See

By Kota Neelima

Is Red not gathered from battlefields,
The colour of tribute, the last rose?
The eyes see beneath wounds healed,
the lingering scars, the settled score.

Was Blue not colour of lonely journeys?
Of those left behind or lost in transit?
The eyes see the cost of destiny
Paths that don’t cross, roads that don’t exist.

Where did Green come from,
If not desire for power, the will?
The eyes see fallen walls of history,
Lines in sand to live by, to kill.

And what of nature, of trees?
Free of human wrong and right?
In the changing colours of complicity,
The eyes see no leaves of White.

Is the Moon never constant
To promises made in its name?
Why does it change when it’s absent?
The eyes see no Moon the same.

What colour the birds?
Dreams of impossible things?
Eternal thoughts, mortal words,
Prisoners of limited wings?

What colour the common sky?
Before nation, religion, books of rules?
What colour freedom?
The eyes can see the personal Blues.

These mountains of flight, these roots of rest;
Mind of the mind knows them to be free
They wait their turn to exist
To be what the eyes can see.

Perhaps it can be remade,
The Other’s truth, the One’s fancy
Recall any sky of memory
Reclaim what the eyes can see.


kenesitam patati presitam manah kena pranah prathamah praiti yuktah
kenasitam vacamimam vadanti caksuh srotram ka u devo yunakti

srotrasya srotram manaso mano yad vacho ha vacham sa u pranasya pranah
chaksusas chaksur atimuchya dhirah, prety asmal lokat amrta bhavanti

On whose wish does the mind go on its errand? On whose command does the first breath go forth? On whose wish do we speak this speech? What god directs the eye, or the ear?

It is Ear of the ear, Mind of the mind, Speech of the speech, Breath of the breath, and Eye of the eye; and so the wise give up wrong notions when they depart from the world and find immortality.
(Kena Upanishad)

anyatra dharmad anyatradharmad anyatrasmat krtakrtat.
anyatra bhutachcha bhavyachcha yat tat pasyasi tad vada.

Tell me that which you see as different from right and wrong, different from cause and effect, and different from past and future.
(Katha Upanishad)

Tree