Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2025
Excerpts from The Book of Dawn, poems by Randhir Khare.
Artwork by Chetana Sudame.
Introduction to THE BOOK OF DAWN
The experience of Dawn is apocalyptic in its own special way. Akin to the cycles of living and dying, of feeling and unfeeling, of loving and unloving, of being and becoming, of Divine creation and destruction within and around us, recurring with defining certainty. I never gave much thought to this and lived each waking day with the intensity of my being then slipped into a night flooded with dreams which I experienced and explored. Then the next ‘day’ I went through the same cycle again and again and again, being the addictive person that I am.
In my insane rush to experience but not assimilate, to celebrate the sensations that bathed me rather than allow them to percolate into the reservoir within, in trust, no matter what the consequences – I missed those divine moments of being that could have awakened and transformed me. Then one night, I lay struggling to sleep, a fractured swirl of confusion suffocating me. Had I become, what I feared most – a superficial being, skimming on the skin of water like a long-legged fly? Yes, probably.
I stumbled out of bed, feeling like a body shot by a sniper, trying to reassure myself that I was alive. I was frantic. Out on my balcony, I breathed deeply, letting the late- night air in and out of my lungs, relaxing them until I was still. I looked up at the Raintree in front of me and waited. I didn’t feel time pass. It was a continuous present of which I had become a part. Light washed leaves and gently trickled through. The tree hummed and sang with birds.
I began writing the first of the first entry in the THE BOOK OF DAWN.
This continued for two hundred dawns. Sharing them with my painter-friend Chetana Sudame triggered extended dimensions of creative expression as she responded through her art. US based musician, has been responding by composing pieces for piano. Sanket, the dancer-choreographer has been creating performances.
So the spiral has begun to expand outward towards intimate, community and public performances, readings, exhibitions and more.
Dawn is becoming for me, the seamless link between waking and sleeping, flowing one into the other, between the self and the other, between losing and finding and becoming whole.
Prayers At Daybreak
ONE
I offer these prayers to the spirit of water to be cleansed, dissolved, flow from
form to form until I cannot recognise my former self. Finally free.
I offer these prayers to the spirit of earth that I may be given the love and strength
to nurture and protect all beings, forget myself in the forest of rejoicing.
I offer these prayers to the spirit of fire to allow me to embrace its molten heart
and accept the ash I am.
I offer these prayers to the spirit of wind to carry me away like a winged seed
to join the journey of becoming.
I offer these prayers to the spirit of space to help me see for once the wholeness
of your creation.
Dear One, blessed are you that embodies all and keeps my universe safe in your breath.
TWO
Bless me with the wisdom to acknowledge my mistakes and the compassion to forgive myself.
Bless me with the patience to listen to someone I consider a fool for I just might
be a fool myself.
Bless me with the courage to face myself and expect an apology each time I hurt myself by not trusting my own judgement.
Bless me with the healing power of self-forgiveness each time I hurt another
sentient being.
Bless me with generosity that I may share everything that I say is mine because it is not – I came with nothing and I’ll go with nothing.
Bless me to love all life with all my being till I am you.
Bless me to hear the song of the cricket and dance like a dervish, filled with
ecstasy.
Bless me to walk into the unknown in my search for truth.
This Dawn, give me the strength to be me.
THREE
Below the green earth, below our feet, below the streets and cars and factories, below our love, below our hate, our wars, our marriages and births, below our ash strewn rivers, below all that is alive and dead and waiting to be born – are the roots of trees, wandering, breathing, from space to space, holding the earth together in their arms.
We come from them, we go to them, full with their blood. They are with us and join us, body to body into one.
And you, Mother Earth, hold us inside you, protecting us.
Through the membranes of your womb the sky seeps in – filled with the joy of being.
Praise dawn, praise our new selves today, our preciousness that you’ve made above-below the earth that we stay one though separately unique.
The day with gleaming scales swims through the air, fins swirling.
Great Mother of infinity, we greet your day, turn rainbows in gratitude.
I am ready Mother for the bounty of today – singing trees, and life when it awakes;
I am ready for the joy, the disappointments, breath of breeze that flows with flights of birds;
I’m ready to embrace with all my love the pain you offer me, unfeeling words,
I’m ready to begin again what I’ve achieved,
I’m ready to walk down untrodden ways;
Every dawn I’m ready to begin a new song though my throat is dry and hoarse, my body’s old, my lungs are worn and numb;
I’m ready to swim through the dark of my unknowing, be empty and fill my heart again;
I’m ready to follow you Mother
Into the blast of never-ending rain.
FOUR
Tell me, why am I awake when I am dreaming and dream when I’m awake?
Why do I see dark when there’s light within myself? Why do the swollen clouds
not rain? Why does the storm not blow? Why does freedom taste so bitter and prison feel like home?
You listen to my questions, you listen to me wait – for answers that you never give because they’re on my plate.
You know me, love, so deeply, you know my breath, my soul, though I’m lost in some by-way and I’m anything but whole. There’s light inside me glowing but it’s not reaching anywhere without your breath to blow it into the pitch-dark air.
You are dawn that bathes me and opens dust-filled pores, helps me to love and
embrace my failures and my flaws. So move the light within me and help it burn the dark, though freedom is so bitter and I’m ready to embark.
FIVE
I come to you at dawn when pink and grey stream over the trees and settle in fields, wet with dew and risen butterflies cloud grass tips and rest in streams of first light, burning with joy;
I come to you with all my heart like a lover returning home expectantly;
I come to you with no words, unable to speak for I have nothing to say, lost without expectations;
I come to you with feathered songs on the wings of forever unable to move;
I come to you with nothing but my dreams that are locked in a box and I cannot find the key;
I come to you after a long journey, dusty and exhausted with longing;
I come to you for I do not know where to go in this confusion of a lifetime;
I come to you like prayer beads and unspent blessings;
I come to you like I always do like a seed to a womb;
I come to you to be sheltered in the cup of your palm;
I come to you
For I do not know where to go because I’ve lost my way;
All dawn is burning with desire,
Help me find my way in the grey-pink of dawn among clouds of butterflies
In a world that doesn’t care;
I come to you.
SIX
Droplets of dark hang from eyelashes, settle on lips, gather in the streambed of
my mouth, jelly-words hardening. Here alone, I wait to greet light that seeps
through the flat rock of the dark, easing through pores, trickling along bark and leaves, floating on silence. I hear your footsteps through the forest of dawn, feet treading the damp leaves
Give me the courage to empty my lungs till there is nothing left inside and I sit
suspended in stillness, unafraid. Yes, there is space enough in this emptiness to
fill myself with your grace so my being is alive and my thoughts in tatters are
blown away into nothingness.
In emptiness there is space enough to grow, become, un-become and grow again
till the heart filled with stardust becomes everything there ever was and we are
free.
SEVEN
What have you done to me, love, that I can no more see the horror of living, the
injustice, the hopelessness, a world at war with itself, inequality, regret,
oppression, the passing of belief and trust?
I only see the immense possibilities of each moment, the miracle of each breath,
seasons arriving with arms full of promises, time pirouetting with rebirth and
songs of forever.
You have given me the purity of hope, the simplicity of wonder, the wild open
skies of freedom. You have led me down corridors lined with mirages and
brought me to the doorway of myself, a glistening newborn.
This dawn as I walk the open spaces of the sky, gratitude cleanses me, joy
envelops me, acceptance makes me whole.
Blessed be your presence in my life, I am unchained, empowered.
Praise be your presence great and beautiful one –
Gifting me this day wrapped in light that shivers leaves and coaxes the dawn to
permeate my being and wash away regret and longing;
This is the first day of my life, still wet and shining with water from the spring of
my beginning bubbling with wonder.
Surprise me with every step I take, every breath that heaves through me, every
being that shows me truth and offers me a shadow to rest under when the sun at noon is unforgiving.
I embrace this new life with all its possibilities.
EIGHT
Teach me the way of light as it falls drop by drop on the trees and shrubs and
shrouded hills and streams down my body, entering pores, cleansing the earth
within me.
Teach me the way of the wind as it moves through space, on feathered wings
gliding single and in flocks, migrating from land to land, river to river, field to
field, cloud bank to cloud bank, season to season, churning storms, filling sails
over foamed water, moving from world to world, experience to experience.
Teach me the way of emptiness where I can float without expectations, without dreams, without love, without hate, without fear, free.
To live is to be awake to the surprise of becoming.
My love, stay with me as I change from moment to moment, thoughts
abandoning the hive of my head.
© Randhir Khare
Chetana Sudame was born in the Indian city of Nagpur and she grew up with varied academic and creative influences which she combined to evolve to the painter she is today. The world of her art is deceptively simple, rooted as it is in folk metaphors and linear expressiveness. It draws from the timeless realms of Indian folk art, especially Miniature paintings and Madhubani art. During her initial years, her art was influenced by the story telling tradition which is still visible in her work. Her paintings explore the feminine and its numerous social and psychological aspects. Acrylics on canvas and mixed media on paper are her preferred mediums. Her paintings have been displayed in cities across the Indian sub-continent and in Australia and the United Kingdom. Private collectors in India and abroad have her work. THE BOOK OF DAWN, her on-going collaboration with the poet Randhir Khare, reveals new and unexplored areas of internal clarity.
Randhir Khare is a national and international award-winning poet, writer, artist, playwright, teacher and folklorist. He has published 40 volumes of short fiction, poetry, novels, essays, and translations, exhibited his drawings and paintings in 7 solo exhibitions, led 2 poetry-music bands (Mystic & After Rumi) , and performed and read his work in national and international festivals. He has collaborated with A.R.Rahman who has set his poems to music. His two recent books are THE FLOOD & AFTER A Memoir of Leaving and a novel – WOLF, END TIME which explores the role of shamans from traditional communities in the preservation of sacred spaces in wildernesses. Both the books have been published by Vishwakarma Publications. His monumental magic realism novel TARA, THE DOG WHO ALWAYS WAS will be published soon. As a Mentor he has groomed numerous children, young adults and adults to grow into writers, artists and story-tellers. He is the winner of the Gold Medal for poetry awarded by the Union of Bulgarian Writers, The Sahitya Akademi’s Residency Award for his life time contribution to literature and The Palash Award for his lifetime contribution to Education and Culture. A film, TRAVELLING LIGHT, is being made on his life and work. He is the Director as well as Counsellor of a school and College in Pune.