Poetry on Janusworx

What I’d Do for You

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:08:36 +0530

Click for a larger pic

this morning
i told the flowers
what i’d do for you
and they blossomed

— Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

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First Love

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 15 May 2024 14:45:37 +0530

Moss Roses, in my window.
Click to enlarge

Petals unfurl
    from a delicate flower,
    closer to picked
    with each
    passing hour,
    losing the I
    and gaining
    an our.

— Michael Faudet, First Love, Dirty Pretty Things

The Art of Losing

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:39:16 +0530

A path, somewhere in the palace gardens at Versailles.
Click to enlarge

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

— Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Bloom

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 19:51:35 +0530

Click to enlarge

To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility —
— Emily Dickinson, Bloom

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P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit.

White Eyes

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 05:45:00 +0530

Snow clouds rolling down a mountain peak, near Se La

I don’t know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
        tucked in a white wing
                while the clouds—

which he has summoned
    from the north—
        which he has taught
                to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
        like stars, or the feathers
                 of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent—
        that has turned itself
                into snow.

White-Eyes, Mary Oliver

On Why Farmers Agitate, The Best Online Classes You Can Take and Love Letters to Trees

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 09 May 2021 05:45:00 +0530

This post was first sent to my newsletter on May 2nd, 2021.
[You really ought to subscribe][1] :)

New month, new newsletter! :)
Let’s get right into it, shall we?

An informed look on the why of the farmers agitation.

Vivek Kaul’s post on how Bihar fared when they did away with APMCs in 2006, shows why the farmers are up in arms.
Read them here, part 1, part 2, & part 3

The farm prices at which farmers sell continue to be depressed compared to the MSPs and given that difference has only increased in recent years, weakens the argument forwarded by supporters of the new farm laws which extrapolates deregulation to improved price realization for farmers. Economic theory doesn’t always fall in line with things actually happening on the ground.

… while the net income of farmers in Bihar rose from 2007 to 2010, nevertheless, it has been declining continuously since 2010, up to the point we have data for. The declining income is explained by a rise in costs of agriculture inputs (seeds, power, labour, fertilizers, cost of finance, etc.) without a commensurate increase in sales revenue. The net income per hectare farmed, has moved alarmingly towards zero.

Scott Young, on the best online classes he took

It’s the holidays! Why not spend sometime learning something new? Scott Young lists some of the best online courses, he’s learnt. It’s a wide ranging, cross disciplinary list, with subjects from Law to Physics to Medical Neuroscience. I am partial to the most meta course of them all, [Learning How to Learn][lhtl]. This kickstarted the learning pivot in my life a couple of years ago, helping me learn so much stuff. [Check out the entire list of ten courses (plus a few honourable mentions) here.][sycl]

Hermann Hesse’s beautiful love letter to trees!

Read here, Watch here
(definitely worth the 5 minute or so watch. Natascha McElhone mesmerises with her voice)

A tree says: My strength is trust.
I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me.
I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else.
I trust that God is in me.
I trust that my labor is holy.
Out of this trust I live.
…
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts:
Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours.
They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them.
But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.
Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is.
That is home. That is happiness.

So here we are, ending our letter on that beautiful soothing note.
Catch you folks, next month!

When I Am Among the Trees

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 05:45:00 +0530

Outside my window

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

— Mary Oliver

Phenomenal Woman

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 05:45:00 +0530

Pooja Singh!

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

— Maya Angelou

When Death Comes

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 03 Feb 2019 20:00:00 +0530

I want this glorious verse from Mary Oliver’s poem to be my eulogy, when, you know, my death comes.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

— via Austin Kleon’s touching eulogy to Mary Oliver.

P.S. Also love her instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

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