Five Poems
Painter: Federico Zandomeneghi
By Goirick Brahmachari
Undertones
I can hear the whispers darling,
They are clear like the sea
Look how this winter’s fading
How the mist unwraps me.
Like dust that settles in rain,
Life’s riddles under the bare sun
Whatever has happened shall remain
When our hours have outrun
These grim leers of hate you marry
Mark the death of a rotten me
To suit and heed in lines now weary
Oh why hush now or rig your invisible glee?
But these lines, these leaves do not seek
I keep them dry for this world to pique.
***
Die tomorrow
If I die tomorrow, there will be no one to blame
No evidences to look for, no real cause of pain
If I die tomorrow, there shall be no more pain
All harm pardoned, everyone else looks sane
If I die tomorrow, it surely won’t rain,
Why would it? What will it gain?
If I die tomorrow, there will be no one to blame
This world has given up and I am just trying to remain.
***
2016
A wasted spring
In JNU – a worn-out dream,
Some mud for your eyes; we walk
Through the memories
Of riot and shame, buried
Behind the white- washed walls of rani motors
that sleeps with its lies.
A few pages of hope accumulated
together. Dust. Through summer pain, we ran;
A life on the edge, escape
To Vashisht, my third – a job
Lost, rain, a life –
Long disease
Acquired; so many lovers,
Haters, friends,
Estrangements,
Anger,
Stones!
And a self-destructive
Discovery of a routine
In early morning plight.
***
Level ground
Probably it is in these renewed meanings
With all their enthusiasm and pain and smirks
That life continues to bring these images
Inside my head like a string of ironies
As one would expect
In frames like these that shape a city
When I remember every bending line
In your face, as you smirk in white paints
And your mom stretches her hands
For a mid-Monday morning yoga
In the middle of this park where
I once lost my eyes
Now I stand outside rolling little golis of bhola in my palm,
Drinking my cup of tea. Talking,
To Mashi who spends her mornings
Watching the boiling tea
Leaves, nodding to the sounds that
A poor, wanderer, deaf man makes
Trying hard to explain
That he too speaks in the same language.
A strange sadness breezes in
And we sit gazing at
All the lonely people
In this crowded park, only the sound
Of long noisy sips of tea from warm paper cups
Breaks this cycle, offers some comfort
Inside this park that closes its gates for ramblers like us
When the owners return
To reclaim their chosen evenings.
As shopkeepers from the nearby market
Lunch in winter grass and sun,
A few salesmen and women talk
Over phone, sitting alone, walking,
Domestic helpers sway in swings
Their lovers drunk, now roll in mud, their children escape
School to play football, and your mom
Stretches her hands to reach for new spaces
And sounds, as it dawns on me and makes
Me a little light
To realise that deep down
We are all ugly, broken souls trying to catch
Some goldfish out of thin air.
***
Your Deccan Heart
Carry me to your sleep, lady
Carry me,
Through the old bylanes of the old city
Through the lights that pass on empty streets
Of memory, through rusted wires of our disjointed gibberish
Carry me
Carry me to your sleep.
The stoned heat that grows into your day
The night winds of partings – half-constructed subways
Your Deccan heart breathes in
My longing
Through the hazy, yellow, cyber highways
In smoke and ashes, bokehs in your lips
Dry dust must rust in the southern breeze
Like falling rain – your hair, skin
Carrying my weight within
All my joy! my tears ring
An earthen song, an upsetting morning.
The gates are closed, but the road is long,
My lost is found, and all that I found, darling
Was lost
Since the beginning
So carry me, lady,
Carry me to your sleep.
Bio:
Goirick lives in Delhi. His chapbook of poems, joining the dots, was recently published from Nivasini Publishers, Hyderabad.
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5 Responses to “Five Poems”
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