RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND JERNAIL SINGH ANAND

Mauro Montacchiesi (Rome)

ESERGO

“Faith is the bird that, when the dawn is still dark, feels the light..” — Rabindranath Tagore

PREFACE

In the brownian traffic of cosmic thought, few, very few indeed, are the voices that shine with luminescing clarity -Rabindranath Tagore and Jernail Singh Anand are two of them. Although they are many years apart, they are brought together in the spiritual and poetic sphere of existence, where their philosophies, ethics and aesthetic minds intermingle in a metaphysical quest. This meeting is not a mere dialogue of minds, but an eavesdropping of two souls: two souls that are committed to truth, to beauty and to human advancement. Bengal’s mystic bard meets bio-textual consciousness sage of a later age; Tagore and Anand speak across the time and space of centuries and continents.

MONOLOGUE BY TAGORE

I am the hushed tone of the break of day.

My words are drawings in the air, my grief and my joy have come and met.

The universe is not a problem to be solved but a poem to be sung. In every flower’s whisper, in every beggar’s palm, I see the face of the Infinite.

Not to teach, but to wake. The soul is not a lesson but a dance.” Oh Earth, with fire let me kiss you, and in your embrace vanish.

HAIKU

Waves of morning light

caress the soul’s silent shore

—truth blooms in stillness.

MONOLOGUE BY ANAND

I am the pen of the hopeless, the scream of the battered Earth.

My ink suffers of time, my pen mourns.

The truth is not a relic, it is a cry. I’m moving with some prophets/ eating with the orphans.

I saw my thirst mirrored, there in Whitman and Puran Singh. In the mirror of Whitman and Puran Singh, I found my thirst; I learnt my thirsting. Out of this thirst, I forged the theory of Bio-Text—where blood and word can no longer be told apart.

APHORISM

“The poem is written by the world whispering through the soul, not by the poet.”

DIALOGUE BETWEEN TAGORE AND ANAND

TAGORE: Do you write with joy, Anand, or with wounds?

ANAND: I write because wounds have learned to sing. And you?

TAGORE: I sang before I knew what sorrow meant. Then sorrow became my scale.

ANAND: We have walked the same riverbanks, then. I named the stream Bio-Text. You called it Gitanjali.

TAGORE: And yet, a longing for the Divine in the human, the current is the same.

ANAND: The poem is our proof, our protest, our prayer.

TAGORE: If truth be told. The poet speaks, even in silence.

ANAND: And the poet restore to health, in suffering.

TAGORE: Like bread among seekers, then let our ink be shared.

SYNTHESIS

In their dialogic dance, Tagore and Anand, unveil the poem as a sacred act: both offering and resistance, both vision and balm. The mystic and the reformer merge into a single pulse of conscience. Their words, whether sung or bled, form a liturgy of hope in the age of dissonance.

PARALIPOMENON

The play takes the form of a dreamed conversation between two great poets who write in right-minded, spiritually questing ways. The form transitions seamlessly blip by blip from monologue to dialogue, aphorism to synthesis, and calls to mind Tagore’s transformative mysticism and Anand’s existential activism. The haiku is a frozen breath of union, and the aphorism is the metaphysical embodiment.

AUTHOR 

Mauro Montacchiesi is one of the leading Italian intellectuals, multi talented and multi awarded author, ex President  of the A.I.A.M. International Academy of Modern Art in Rome. 

DR. ANAND:

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, with an opus of 180 plus books, is Laureate if the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards.  His name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Anand is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision. He’s not just an Indian author but a global voice, challenging readers to confront the complexities of existence while offering hope through art and ethics.   If Tagore is the serene sage of a colonial past, Anand is the fiery prophet of a chaotic present.

Yo soy Lydia 

I planned on  being a doctor

So I could pay off 

The loans and mortgages 

Of my kin

Yo soy Jose 

I dreamed of making rockets 

That would take people to Mars

I make them from aluminum foil 

In my dreams

Yo soy Carla

I dream of owning a bakery

With my abulitos recipes 

Yo soy 

I have dreams of Harvard.

So I can learn to defend my people against ice agents

Yo soy Maria 

I dream of having grandkids while grading my students papers

Yo soy Julio I too rebuild the world

Yo soy camila I dream of having 

Many many babies 

Yo soy Ricardo

I dream of being a police officer

Yo soy Juan I want to be a teacher

Yo soy..

BOOM

Waylaid

You waylaid me

When I was determined,

With boots and walking stick,

To trek into the ravine,

A sober, brackish crevasse

Down Old Woman Creek.

But you, your hues against

Blue, an enticing brilliance

In the morning light,

Thwarted my intention.

Your sensible summer viridians

Absent, you got me drunk,

An inevitable debauchery.

On yellow, crimson, saffron

And that leathery bronze

And alizarin of the oak.

Presumption

The blackbird scolds me,

A torrent of abuse from

High above in the willow.

Furious over my very presence,

She imagines the worst in me

(This is becoming tiresome.)

Presumes an evil agenda,

A scheme on her lovely eggs,

Her nest in the bulrushes.

When I look up to reassure,

To list honorable intentions,

To even express disinterest,

I notice, just past her wings,

The moon, transparent in the

Morning sun, undeniably

Virtuous against blue.

I am grateful for the coincidence

“Oh, there you are!”

And offer a genial introduction.

My appeal to the blackbird

Is the moon will vouch for me.

We’ve been acquaintances,

Maybe pals, for some time now.

In his crisp and taut collection April No Longer Comes, poet Yucheng Tao evokes fragile, transitory moments of elegance that seem to fade away even as the speakers appreciate them. 

A speaker recollects a museum visit with his now-deceased sister to see a Rothko exhibit. He later imagines a blue horse carrying her from her casket “to a spring which never ends.” Spring, and specifically the month of April, show up later in the collection in some very short pieces on butterfly wings and in “Fever,” a longer piece on a speaker’s recovery from illness. The winter imagery of snow and mist in many other pieces (“Snow,” “We,” “The Glory of the Snow”) becomes a counterpoint, burying or shrouding beauty in a way that is itself graceful. 

Tension and a subtle melancholy permeate many of Tao’s works, even those otherwise vibrant and full of life. In the first poem, “The Fading Light of Dead April,” about a couple enjoying a pizza dinner at a restaurant, Tao shows us the delicate bubbles in clear soda, yet ends lines with “bitterness” and “cutting off the clarity,” leaving readers with confusion and angst. In “The Glory of the Snow,” the speaker watches a beautiful woman dance, with picturesque imagery of her red lips against the white mounds of flakes, but then, ‘a clumsy dancer,’ she falls to the ground. 

Death makes an appearance throughout the collection, directly in “Mr. Raven” and elsewhere as an aspect of our existence. In “Arrival Before the Rose Dream Ends,” a man eats out with his girlfriend in Portland, Oregon, the city of roses and the shadow of Mount St. Helens’ past eruption, and dreams of the volcano when he passes away in his sleep. In “Mr. Raven,” the speaker’s ticket to the afterlife “is written in the age spots on his hands.” Even an inanimate scarecrow (“The Scarecrow”) becomes less alive as bored teenagers and the weather wear down its body. 

Coupled with the many natural images in the collection, mortality here seems as natural as the change of the seasons, whether characters choose to drift away peacefully or beg for more time. As Tao says in “We,” “Things shift, change, and transform: birth, death, and beyond.” 

Our hopes, dreams, and identities here can be as fragile as our physical bodies. In “Where,” a speaker searches a rose garden looking in vain for a particular flower, comparing himself to Adam and Eve cast out of Eden when the blossom remains out of sight. The protagonist in “Untitled” puts on the face of a clown to cover his emptiness after his reflection, his identity, falls all around him with the shards of a broken mirror. The very last piece in the collection, “Mary’s Secret,” shares the story of a little girl rescued by loving people from an abusive situation, who attempted to bring spring into her heart. 

The short lines and reserved, non-grandiose language of the poems in “April No Longer Comes” ground the sentiments in reality and make the motifs of the book more universal. Many readers can relate to “lost Aprils,” times beautiful yet delicate, now fading into memory.

Yucheng Tao’s April No Longer Comes is out now from Alien Buddha Press and available here.

Guardians

You stand at the border,

For the peace of the homeland.

You are vigilant without moving,

For every trial.

Your parents without seeing you,

For five, six, seven months.

Your children, longing for you,

Thinking in your mind.

You are the guardians of the homeland,

The fortresses of the future.

If my homeland is restless,

You cannot sleep even late.

Maftuna Rustamova Ruslan, a 9th grade student of secondary school No. 30, Jondor district, Bukhara region

Maftuna Rustamova Ruslan qizi. 19.09.2010 I was born in Jondor district of Bukhara region. Currently, I have graduated from the 8th grade of school No. 30. I have been interested in writing poems since my youth. Currently, I have many achievements in the field of poetry.

I participated in the district stage of the “Zukko Kitobhon” Republican Competition and took an honorable 2nd place. I participated in the district stage of the “Jaddidlar izida” Republican Competition and took an honorable 2nd place. In addition, we participated with a team in the “Third Renaissance in the Eyes of Youth” Competition and took 3rd place. On March 8, 2025, my first book was published under the title “My First Words in the World of Poetry”. I was awarded the “New Age Science Creator” badge, established in cooperation with Africa and Uzbekistan. I was appointed as the coordinator of one of the famous US magazines “Synchronized Chaos” in Uzbekistan. Currently, I am the head of the Bukhara region Press Service of the “Young Reformers’ Council”. My creative works have been published in many magazines and articles and indexed on Google.

NIRVANAMAN

My body is the border

between light and my shadow.

Sometimes I wear the lion,

sometimes the chameleon.

Where is my Nirvana Man,

the one who can quit crawling

among the identities

who inhabit my being?

I am like hostile siblings

hiding inside my human,

senator/saint/assassin.

All drunk on sweet wildgod wines.

COHABITATION

One’s freedom designs one’s doom,

and doom patterns one’s freedom.

Domesticated as one,

a different damascene

dominates each domain.

One decorates Notre Dame

and one does Nostradamus.

Thingdom is my domicile–

loud energy and atoms,

dumb gravity’s domination

YOU ARE MY JACKPOT

I won you on a poker hand.

I thought he thought I was bluffing

so I said, “Double or nothing.”

He had two 10s and a 7

and I had two 10s and a 9.

But when he lost he was laughing,

and I didn’t see my danger,

I didn’t know that I was stuck.

I’m still eager to ante up

to gamble with friends and strangers.

They won’t take you as my wager,

so I never have any luck.

LA SREVER S’EFIL

When I went to sea

My mama warned me:

Bewre, my son,

the breakers,

the banks, and the bars.”

dilated — deleted — deluded:

that man now cast by shadow

a fleeting ex-star’s cameo in some other’s dream

distort-reflected from the funhouse mirror

a wivk to darken the lightness

noonday moon’s dry rain

a spectator prpjected from zoo’s perspective

faint notes inhaled from the tuba

downside in outside up

When I went to sea

My mama warned me:

Bewre, my son,

the breakers,

the banks, and the bars.”

NYUN

“When birds

lose their plumes in the sand,

they can’t

glue balloons to thir hands.

They can’t fly

so they die.”

— traditional blues song

The years are like so many sweet girls.

They cuddle against the navel in the middle of the night.

They change O the challenge the body

with pain with delight.

But though the waist is gone, its shadow yet remains.

   Is this what we needed?

   To lie in fields that we seeded

   with the sperm of you/and/me?

My skin is a wrinkledup grocery sack,

all the goodies unpacked and eaten long ago.

My erection turned into ice yesterday,

my eyelids into snow.

But though this face is gone, the halo yet remains.

   All the stones unheeded…. The skies…. The fields….

   Back have kneeded into worms, my butterflies.

And the years. And the years: just like the sweet young girls!

Hanging in memory like leather kites,

gaufy garish stabbing harsh neon lights

to mark the passing of fond remembered rites.

But though this voice is gone, its cho yet remains.

   Is this what we needed?

   To die in fields which receded with the germs of yesterday?

*

(A toast: Time is a precious necklace bequested upon your birth. As time’s beneficiary, you must realize its worth. Though age emcircles your throat with its usual yearly pearl, the worth rests in the wearer and not within the jewel.)

*

The Duane you loved is gone:

There’s a Stranger in his skin.

The old duane was younger,

and the new one’s bones are thin.

Former laughs reform as coughs.

The change cloud=to=clod begins.

*

“When birds lose their plumes in the sand,

They can’t glue balloons to their hands,

They can’t fly so they die.”

[nyun is a Korean homonym that means years of floozies]

A Letter from Said to Saida
Said Ahmad and Saida Zunnunova’s love and memory… eternal through history

They changed my name into numbers cold,
My joy turned bitter, my pain grew bold.
I don’t know if God will grant me strength,
But trust me, Saida, I’ll love you at any length.

I’m not the one to blame for their deceit,
Not for the lies that call pride “elite.”
I’ve never been the foe they claim—
Believe me, Saida, I’m still the same.

“To the land of no return”—they sent me far,
No demon bound me, no cursed scar.
Will I return in ten long years?
Wait for me, love—hold back the tears.

To me, you were the moon and sun,
You bore it all while I was gone.
You loved without a word of debt,
From Said to Saida—my deepest respect.

Baxtiniso Salimova Azamat qizi was born on August 29, 2004, in Zarbdor neighborhood, Guzar district, Kashkadarya region. She is currently a 4th-year student at the Faculty of Philology of Karshi State University. She is the absolute winner of the 2nd season (2025) of the “Young Readers’ League.” She is also a two-time winner of the “Smart Reader” competition organized at the regional level. She won 3rd place in the “Young Readers” competition held in honor of the “International Book Giving Day.” To date, several of her articles, poems, and stories have been published.