Lend Your Ears
By Tapeshwar Prasad
Lend your ears
I have other ways
To enamour your heart
Hark! My calligraphy
Lending your ears
On the wings of a butterfly –
One flower to the next
**
Colour of my grief
I puff up the earth
A little more, from
Under my grave
To see you blooming
Colour of my grief –
The blood of my poppies
Rooting the nerves, inside
**
Scarecrow of the night
You have been
So easy upon me
Like a butterfly of my dreams
Yet, the reality; outside
was maintaining
an eerie silence
in this turbulent night
I settled down
With an imagery of the fore
Cozy in my sleep
Yet the evil spirit of the night
Was hell bent over
frightening me, with its
Scarecrow imagery
**
Trollybag
I was all seeing –
You, that were
Rolling your baggage
on a silent railway platform
in the middle of luminous night
Florescent
flickering station light
merging with the distant moon
waiting for the train to come
Ducklings of my trollybag
Never miss me
Unblinking, that
I see you
Riding the stairs of a whistling train
**
Glee
These volcanic ashes
That soot over
the burdened sky
Pastel a colour to my canvas
Glee
of my brush and paints
burning more proper
What so ever it did
by way of gloom
It could not reach
the heights of canvas
Mirroring
the magma
These of my colours
just did it
taking a plunge
by lines and curves
**
Ruth of the sky
I am ever dependent
upon the flock
Standing guard
Against the twilight
Nestlings –
by the dusk
Chirping
your homecoming –
Ruth of the sky
**
Chisel
What is this ilk
of your hieroglyphics –
Sacred words
carved on my stony eyes
in pursuant of a will.
How
will you then, do me tears
by my cheeks;
whose blades have become blunt
by the repeated use of your chisel
***
