In Golden Times

As a seed seeks a safe place to hide Till it gains the strength to sprout and grow Hearts that are weak or marred by frailties Need LOVE to make them strong and pure.	Though Love spells special passion for youth, Its magic hold entranced, in its spell, People of all ages – young and old, Neither age nor customs its glory can dim
Love lives in souls lofty and true And shuns the mighty and haughty, Love can never find a place In hearts that are hard and stony.	In Love, sympathy flows like a stream Gushing and flowing with ecstasy, Like magical springs emitting milk and honey, Love oozes from hearts that are kindly.
Love shines and sparkles in speech Never adopting a harsh tone. In songs sung with a melodious voice, It reflects itself and is amply shown.	Though sad and painful the pangs of love, We are told that sweet they are, And that, not to have loved at all, To love and lose, it’s better far !

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Preface (excerpt)

Immortal poet John Keats in his poem “On the Grasshopper and Cricket” has so subtly mused:

The poetry of earth is never dead:
 When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
 And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
 That is the Grasshopper’s - he takes the lead
 In summer luxury - he has never done
 With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
 He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed,
 The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
 On a lone winter evening, when the frost
 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
 The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever.
 And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
 The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills

These immortal words have become eternally true that so long as man exists with his natural surroundings, the ‘poetry of earth is ceasing never’.  I imagine myself to be a humble grasshopper and a cricket among the galaxy of world’s eminent poets including poets of our sub-continent.  Though, our country cannot boast of Keats, Shelly, Wordsworth or T.S. Eliot in English language but India did produce Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Tora Dutt, Nessim Ezekiel, Dom Morris, Vikram Seth, Dr. I.H. Rizvi, Keki N. Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Imtiaz  Dharker, Jeet Thayil, Vijay Nambisan, Dr. Hyder Nayab, Ruth Vanita to name a few.  But India’s’ contribution to poetry in Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and other languages are no less than that of any other language.  The best of philosophical thoughts and gems in poetry are found in Indian languages.

I claim to be a victim of this human failing and have dared to raise myself to hop like a “Grasshopper”, and not to remain as a frog in a pond, but allowed my urgings to pen in verses. I Though, I cannot claim to be a rose in a garden or be “Full many a flower is born to blush Unseen” and allow myself to “….Waste its sweetness on the desert air”. Yet I have embolden myself to pen verses in my collection. I may have failed miserably to come up to the strict standards laid down by syntax, semantics and poesy, yet with all the apologies to the past and existing poets, I present my fresh collection of poems. I have named it “In Golden Times”

DR. S L PEERAN

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Foreword to Golden Times by Dr. Krishna Srinivas (excerpt)

Like Blake, Peeran sees the world in a grain of sand and Eternity in an hour.

An administrator lisping in numbers may sound strange but Muse    in Peeran has blossomed into many – splendoured exuberance in this collection of poems – IN GOLDEN TIMES.

Every moment of Time is a mountain. Invisible, magical realities beyond our senses, float out of the unconscious, when the boundaries between the self and world are crossed.  It opens expanded moments. The poet dives into these moments – one with nature, its darkness and mystery. Thus poems gleam as magical chalices, reality winking at the brim.  Here in this collection, there is self-discovery, new grounds to liberate emotions.

Let’s  walk away from this listless life
     to a yonder place where there is no strife,
 But  is full  of peace, solace, serenity    
     a place  full of  nature’s beauty,
 Where rainbows  appear  upon  the skyline,
Where minds meet the joys  of the Divine,
 Where the art  of living is  a grace,
     Where barriers of religions have no trace

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