On looking at old photographs when grief is still new in the heart

--

Pain and love
Mingle in the sweet, sharp
Slice of the knife

--

Birthday present

(No cause for alarm - this was written in 2006.)



What shall I give you for your birthday,
you asked.

Perhaps, if you could get me a painkiller
for the ache inside?
Or a pack of plasters that could
hold together pieces of a broken heart?

Everything else you have given me
is enough to last a very long time.
I can't take any more
from you.




(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Love

Don’t give it a name and don’t
make me any promises.
Just be there
when you can,
And I will hear
when you call.

There might be music
in the air, or in your heart
But that is as it should be,
regardless.

Perhaps you will smile
at a passing flower
or a memory.

Perhaps I will hum
at the bus-stop.

It’s nothing.
Really.

And if I should say
"I love you"
In a moment when I am
carried away,
Chalk it up to
ecstasy.



(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Mood

A little music -
Some wine -
The cool of the night
And a hint of rain...

Is this what makes a mood?
Stir it, gently.



(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Not a romantic

You protested,
But it is, nonetheless, so.
The prospect, the approach,
The packaging, the sales pitch.
You even had a copywriter -
A poet I've never heard of.
It's the old romantic hardsell
And I'm too old and you're too romantic.
I do believe you're the worst kind,
A hopeless romantic.
Go find someone
Whose illusions are intact.


(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Free Association

I couldn't write poetry, even if you paid me, he said.
Even if I was pickled, he said,
So we decided to listen to music.

Have you noticed, he said,
That the vermilion in your parting...
That the hibiscus in the garden sometimes,
When it blooms in full sunlight,
Is exactly that shade?

The way you stand, he said,
When you're making something lovely for dinner,
When you know I've come back too tired to help
And I just want to stand there watching you -
But I ask, nonetheless -
And when you wave me away, saying
"It's nothing, it's all done."
When you turn from counter to stove,
And you stir the familiar old pot and your wrist moves like a cloud,
And when you stand, and you laugh at me gazing like that,
The way you stand
Is like a Bharatanatyam dancer in that brief moment of repose
Between movements.

Your voice, he said,
Is like wine in a glass
Against golden light.


(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Late at night

Somewhere not too far away
Clouds have gathered
And are proposing to descend
On my garden before morning.

Flooded drains, long-forgotten debris
Hurtling down impassable streets,
My cassette tapes lost to fungus;
Yet, I miss the monsoon in Goa

(too far away now, unlike
the days in Bombay when
I could catch the No 48 BEST bus
to Bhaucha Dhakka, and the boat).

A midnight shower, then,
With Medimix soap

It smells of rain.




(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)

Gold-laden idol

They looked for God in a gold-laden idol
To which they gave a name
And in which they thought they found their idea of God.
But the gold dazzled them
And what they thought they saw was neither real nor the truth.