À l’heure du tout à l’image et du buzz sans suite, «l’express» souhaite faire découvrir la plume de poètes, de chanteurs, d’écrivains et de tous ceux qui jettent leur âme sur le papier, et qui mettent en mots des réflexions profondes.

One word, meanings innumerable, reasons multiple

One word of letters five, two syllables so simple

One word, for atheists just a word

One word, for believers it’s a whole world

Who can understand Karma?

Tears in my eyes, is it Karma mine?

Pain in my neck, is it for me destined?

Obstacles abound in some life innocent

In some guilty life, wealth, luck always present

Who can to me explain Karma?

What is the wheel of karma, the innocent asks

Is it my life past or my future at task?

Let me use anger against God’s secret

To ask what fault I committed

Then I may understand Karma!

Let me use my abhorrent miserliness

To feel for God absolute possessiveness

Teach me to turn my crazy infatuation

Into longing compulsive devotion

I will surely then love the word Karma!

God smiles, in an assuring protection posture

Karma answers in a rhythmic tune and pleasure

The wheel of Karma is nothing but your life

Going round and round in bondage and strife

Did you now understand the Karma debt?

Ride the karmic cycle with repentance

With the lord of eternal maintenance

To reach the ultimate dissolution

To merge in the final surrender with devotion

Will this be the end of the Karma cycle?

Wash the adverse Karma with your tears

Drown the Karma and all your fears

Install on the throne of the heart

A lotus of unshakeable faith as reward

Harnessed will be beneficial or adverse

Karma!

Karma sitting on the tip of your breath

To fly away at the next and be no more a threat!

It will be the end of your Karma

Washed by the waters of Dharma

Bio

Dr Anitah Aujayeb

Having been writing for a long time, her latest book is entitled “The Last Pilgrimage”, from which this poem comes. A long-standing educator in Literature in English at both secondary and tertiary levels, she is also the Chairperson of the President’s Fund for Creative Writing, under the aegis of the Ministry of Arts and Cultural Heritage, a unit which caters for publication of books of Mauritian authors. She devotes her time to the promotion of literature, in all genres, and literature in all languages has always been her passion.