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I have decided to write poetry now. The Romantics, like Shelley, wrote poetry and painted about life and nature before the Industrial Revolution. This is because life was nicer then, in some ways, for example coal smoke didn't pollute the air. The same problem persists in modern human settlements. The same urge therefore exists to escape it, something I'm able to do effectively on this trip. It's in a remote, high altitude area, the human settlements are less mechanised, sparser and nature dominates.
To Ape
International peace celebrity
Another reason for the world to hate China
Mountain monk amongst slickers in the city
Diluting their urban pain by attending his seminar
Dalai, as the Chinese call him,
Do we know him?
I saw him first in a tennis stadium
Packed full of seekers full of sin
Looking to melt their woes
In the sound of the world's authority on peace
They sit in rows,
Listen and I wonder if I've been fleeced
Do they know the world from which the man and his principles come?
Like another popular guru, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba of Putaparti - India,
The beliefs of both arose from societies that would shock some.
Ancient, poor, socially backward, these spring to mind now I'm here.
Sai Baba,
God man of the Indian urban poor
The Dalai Llama,
Leader of a sky nation that is no more
Both spiritual leaders to the rich,
Scientific, mechanised West
Aping the East to scratch a spiritual itch
Recognition that their lives aren't blessed?
The seminar is about avoiding envy
The Lama's interpreter is funny, engaging
The pained urban apers are nodding like Noddy
Their lives finally have a pre-packaged Eastern meaning
From Rod Laver Arena now,
Chalice of tennis stardom and the occasional peace guru
To Stoke Palace, Leh, where 15 years later he again have I found
This morning in a Suzuki did he humbly pass through
Driven in a convoy of traditionally dressed girls
Chanting, hands a waving, cheeks a rosy
School kids in a row, worried teachers in a whirl
The man with the square glasses passes quickly
It was nothing but it's everything
For this was like the Queen
Now amongst his people and the love they bring
He is no specimen here, everyone knows what he means
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Piyush Frame it.....