Threads of Innocence :Babylon of Beginnings Part II

The babe eats purely for power,
Extracting from meals no cerebral taste.
While we seek status even in taste,
Policing plates, preening to savor
Exclusive delights, rarities without par
That boost egos. Return to ingesting as fuel for your star-
A blind need met simply, unjudged caloric intake
That builds the same wellsprings of energy held before
Any urge to elevate food as identity's gate
And cure.

As ardors cool, as bodies eros,
We forget past indifferences toward our narrow plots-
When worlds unfurled ahead, still unblemished, unboxed
From all paradigms. When each dawn's fresh provoke    
Had power to let passions rise unfettered by the choke  
Of pragmatism. Remember then, in your latter ache
At dreams deferred, there are yet glories ahead!    
Though you return to needs base as the babe's, be not shooken
In spirit - but attend simple moments, break
Open the present's treasure, dormant in plain sight.

Our jagged teeth emerge, erupt in violence
From tender gums, to rend and bite-
Civilizing forces swiftly alight
To dull those points, straighten misaligned incisors.  
We're trained to cut with words, not hands.
Yet at life's end, nature's impulse understandably demands:
Return to primal state where social contracts band
Not the spirit. Shed false civility, be honest if you can.
Speak truth before time runs dry, though it topples repute, slices decorum.

Beware though lest words also veil, masquerade.
Be like the babe who cries pure hurt or joy,
No hidden meanings to decode or ploy,    
Just raw heart, uncloaked by artifice's shade.
As you near the horizon, be not afraid
To wail true sorrow or laugh real mirth-   
Shed pretense, speak from your core, though this earth
Finds honesty suspect, too real, too rawly played
In theater where we're players not beings.
Risk rejection: unpack your heart, let it roar wild

We grasp each object with palms stretched,
Testing weight and texture, all mystery.
While at life's end, things solid now spectral,
Once familiar furnishings gone surreal,
Let us recall those fresh beginnings, when material
Was sublime in its tangibility, not means to an end
But marvelous end in itself. This world friend
Trusted, not doubter mocking our stumbling. Help us regain
Eden's eyes, where perfection was not the aim
But rapture at being's pinpoint, here, now, finite yet eternal.

We hit a crescendo in life's swan song
Where past's prologue, pride can prolong      
No more. And like notes fading, we hold on
To remembered symphonies that unfurl
In the mind alone. Yet the babe knows no stories
But this now. And that is their glory.  
They live the music undiluted by memory's leaven.
So seek not former crowds' roars; let your passion play
This bare moment, emptied of accolades cradling brittle ego.
Create for the art, not vaunting vainglory.

We glean but glimpses into their fresh terrain
Where senses dance still in wonder's rain,
Drinking unabashed, without need or plan.
While our cacophonies crescendo, we train our ear
To ambition's metronome, productivity's pager
Ever ticking, 'til brink of coffin, time no longer
Slack. But in end's return to reliance, we could regain
New eyes like the babe's beholding all without filter or strain-
Alive to each instant as tourists drunk on this world's splendor.
 
Step forth again guileless in what you do not ken.
Trust to process, not product. Cry out your joy and pain.
 Leave old failures like cast-off garments. Begin
Once more as untried innocents, souls tasting
All for the first. Fear no revealing in full nakedness.
Time will teach truth soon enough - for now, sear
Brands into your heart of lifting larks, depths that dare
You dance though fates fling arrows. Discover and test.
Wander new-born through being's cathedral, knowing no limits.
 
We enter in shadow, mind cloudy,  
Emerging over years studious
Into light - concepts gleaned, glorious
Aha moments. But time makes thoughts muddy
Again, muddles memory, and study's  
Fine points waft into the uncaught.
So travel your life the perpetual scholar
But hold conclusions gently, assured the fuller
Picture remains always over the next hill, unknown
And unknowable. Stay the course with humility

Our minds stretch to grasp the sublime.
Yet at life's end, subtlety evades,
Twilight shades descend, and our accolades   
Won for astute thought now mere pantomime,
Ghostly laurels haunting. Our minds unwind,
Unwound by time, but see - the babe's gaze shines
Unfettered by attempts at the divine
And profound. They dwell in simple joy. Fate refines
Away flashy wealth until only love's colloquy
Between souls remains. Success resides there

So fret not your mental miscues. Stay not steeped   
In shame of perceived inadequacies cataloged.
Join rather the babe in their world unsullied
By self-critique. Absorb this truth at life's outset
And entrance: what matters not is your intellectual conquest,
But courage to walk even awkwardly, and trust the rest   
To grace that brings teachers exactly when souls request
Their wisdom. Our grasping for greatness- how flawed, how misled!
For life's beauty unfolds for those humbly listening, not those who know.

Rise new from imagined ashes of disgrace. Shed limiting labels.   
Walk with naked heart, without defense or appraisal.  
Each step may not be elegant, but this is not our basis.
We're all awkward infants bumbling toward insight.
Forget not how imagination once swirled unrestrained  
In youth's mind before critics clipped wings, adult feigned
Sophistication built walls. Recall wonder of first light
Ever-unfurling, where judgment played no part. Stride wide-eyed once again    
Into first fields, until now unimagined even by the child you were.

We claw air to grasp the unfurling
Sky and all worlds ripening. While descent
Finds us flailing once more for earth depend-
Ent on forces we cannot control.
But the babe knows not far horizons, only
Present array of sensation, life's banquet
At which they ingest without haste or fret.
They live for now, know nothing of dooms still withheld.
Oh, to recover that wise innocence, eyes beheld
By no fear or regret. To inhabit the fullness of just this day.

Some ultimate wisdom long sought, tantalizing-  
Ever out of reach, our lives but footnotes.
For all our toiling, we never fully know
Our purpose, place. Yet the babe, oblivious to all
Deficits, dwells in utter completeness, feels not the gall
Of inadequacy. Perhaps our striving to master some external call
Obscures the only true journey: to consecrate the day at hand, scope small
And near not because lacking but because meaning needs no grasping- it is, and is all.
We need not uncover nor shield from life's mystery. Only walk without hurry or hungering.   

The babe's grasping hands seek to explore  
Their newfound mobility, sensitivity bared
At each novel touch. While at our end days we ignore    
Much sensory input, world now glared
Through foggy film, voices garbled, muted, worlds pared
Down to essentials. Recall then those early days of awakening core-
When each caress of being billowed through your spirit, shorn
Of all filters. Return to wander new edens unjaded senses restore.

We gain speech and lose intuition,
Wrestle with words, escaping our lips,
Tongues tripping, while knowledge acquisition
Lies trapped behind barriers hips
That sway not to mind's precise rhythm. And so life's grip
Loosens at end, words wastrelled, no more bold mission,  
Just garbled utterances without hope of fruition.  
To complete the circle then, learn again from wordless collaboration  
Between inner and outer, deeper communion beyond verbal frictions.

When young we heal with vigor boundless,
Blink unknowing at death's darkness.
With time's tread slow and relentless,
Ills compound, fears crystallize.
But at start, each skinned knee and knock
Brings no haunting specter of bogeys that mock
From the misty end of life's line. Just unfettered
Impulse to rise again. Recall then guts unjittered
By dread of decline. Let this mindset yet steer
Your vision forward, not to shadows but toward dawn.

We glean our life's purpose without knowing,
Guided by some innate signal, crying when needs arise,
Thirst proclaimed clearly with unschooled show.
While at our end, tremulous in deteriorating bodies, we go     
Confused toward expiration, not even clear now
What drives us forward bereft of earlier fire.
Let us ponder then the infant's unconscious life compass entire.
It steers purely through storms, channels currents wild into flow
Smooth and sure. Oh, to heed that inner voice before our own! To stay aligned inside, only truth for guide.

With wisdom won we gain so much
But lose those childhood eyes that drank
Without judgment, unblinkered by constructs
Of conscience or condition, hanging     
No curtains 'tween the seer and seen.
Recall that younger version before cynicism's screen  
Shaded your vision. Cultivate again that prismatic sheen,        
And filterless sight that found beauty lurking in all.  Don't cling        
To superiority's mantle, now so threadbare.
Return rather to the babe's innocence; untouched, it alters not.  

We enter these lives soft-headed, unknowing,       
Exit with minds dimmed, our last breaths going        
Into mystery. What wisdoms were we bestowing
From heights of awareness midway twixt two poles?
Did we share love, ease suffering, exalt living?   
Or did we lock down, cease exploring past our own plots' ridging?  
The babe cares not for accolades, security, fears no ending.      
They model courage, live planted firm in the only true thing:
This moment's gift. All else shifts, melts like mist rising.  

We find identity in mirrors' reflection,          
Name and label parts, dissect our collective
Selves piecemeal, then reassemble expecting
Perfection, certitude. While our life's detection
Dwindles at end in fogbound deception.
Only then we surrender the myth of control,
Capitulate to unknowns, stop parsing the soul.
Become babes again in life's final enrollment.  
Oh, to renounce falsehoods sooner! To swim in the whole!  
You are not your reflection, and never were.

We covet comprehension, meaning clear-cut.
But at life's end submit to inscrutable forces afoot
In our decay, yielding at last to the vast occult
Unknown that laughs at man's conceit.
While babes dwell already in such surrender,
Absorb all as unspoiled beginners.
From their example take this to heart ever after:
You need not solve each mystery to move gladly forward.      
Only walk with courage, come what fog haunts the horizon.

Your mind's muscle and sinew will spasm, atrophy,        
Leaving only memories' phantoms to accompany
Your last days' stumble home.  But see the babe, opportunity
Ever renewed in their uncharted present.  Death not yet fact,
Each moment holy unfiltered through loss. Recall those tracts  
Once traversed in you, ere beauty was bounded by time's lack.       
As the veil thins, may this recollection lead you gently back      
Into wonder at being, not horror at pending absence. We travel
One path only, but many times round. And are forever changed.

So do not go gentle, lest you pass up ecstasy still untasted!   
Rage against the dimming of light! But recall too - we were all babies adored once, cradled gentle in dawn's rosy fingers.  
Time taints memory, leaves only faint imprints, alters song's lingers.
Oh to weave some vestige permanent in our short blaze of being!       
Yet each soul already sings its singular irreplaceable tune.  
Our energy resounds forever down time's corridors. Loss cannot mute the music.

We exit as we entered, hair now silver strand,           
Gums bare, sans veneers. Once more dependent babes as at our first din,       
Return we to arms that must cradle us again.                   
Have we learned then that control's goals are fiction?
That we shine not alone but shimmering in compassion's constellation?  
And each soul's brilliance dwells not in feats but in their diction-      
How they loved, what seeds they sowed before passing into memory's mansion?
We glean this slowly by life's turn, if ever we do.    
Oh, the sad beauty of seeing ourselves again new!



















   The poem is part of a full version found in the book “Homo Sapiens” Part Part I - XVIII, written by Mawphniang Napoleon. This book is part of the popular “Homo Sapiens” book series, which can be purchased online at various online bookstores, such as Amazon. The book is available for purchase for those who are interested in reading the complete version of the poem. Remember to get all the books from the “Homo Sapiens” series, as well as other books by the same author.   So, don’t hesitate and get a copy today from one of the many online bookstores.   Khublei Shihajar Nguh,  (Dhanewad  )(Thank you )