Once The Leader Leaves
The leader has left. The pennon withers With the ebbing wind. Flowers beneath our shoes, Sandwiches served on paper-plates So thin that even My untrimmed nail Can slash through their truths, And I ask where we stand Now that the words are gone, And the oration is silent. My friend munches on. A dragonfly thins out Into the space where our eyes go, Seek nothing but find peace.
The Paradox
“Any man’s death diminishes me”- John Donne
In our springtime amble We see a dule of peace-birds Wash the strip of the sky Between two in-between places – Their burial ground, and our Cremation pier. The vesper left some fragrance. I love it, albeit it makes me sneeze. “Look,” I show my daughter Those shadows that follow us, “we are so small to own those.” She shivers, remembers The latest death amongst our kin, And because she has been Watching TV series she imagines The glacial metalline trays our niece Might have slept before they decide Her flesh can be cremated. A few feathers swirl en arriére. Silence is the common ground We stroll, shaken and sad as only Human can be, and yet peaceful, Perturbed, thinking about our race Growing and diminishing – a paradox.
Time Has It Hands In The Fire and On The Frost
The bird, I imagine, asks how long the bard'll go on scrivening about those stolen kisses he missed as a young man. From the street beneath my verandah, a vagrant upturns his palms. Money? No, he shows his scald. Time has touched both the fire and the frost; does the man feel the veins swelled with the pride for his battle marks? Almost spring, the bipolar wind inoculates two minds I think with, and I think about the bird of the morning and the man without a home, and those two minds fight against the starry starry night and chasing crows inside. Time feeds two serpents. Some rumours of the summer lure you to open the curtains. A flyer flies in. Don't pick up. I scream. We didn't discover any vaccine for belief.
©2021 Kushal Poddar
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