A Lullaby
To you little babe,
to my love for you,
and to this life in which I can love you
shall I sing a lullaby?
I beg the wind to caress you not any harder than the notes of this song. I wish on my heart that you hair not be ruffled by anything rougher than these fingers passing through.
To you little babe, to my love for you, and to this life in which I can love you shall I sing a lullaby?
Over these eyes, in which dreams are not yet dry, resting in my lap, to please not let any wet shadows fall, I plead the mist and cloud.
Please do not thunder, O clouds, on this day, please float away. You sing too, O koyel, as if this lullaby was yours, Please sprinkle your honeyed notes over my dozing babe.
In this space between day and dark, in this room in which torrents are silent, this rocking lap where my babe sleeps, I request you both, red sun and gentle moon, to hum this lullaby too.
To you little babe, to my love for you, and to this life in which I can love you, shall I sing a lullaby?
Translated from the Telugu of "O Papa Lali"
Translations
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Waking
Sarah Vaughn*, the chanteuse, murmurs notes in your ear. But you don't really hear the song, except perhaps, its beginning and its refrain: "You Stepped Out Of A Dream"**. There are other things to pay attention to at the moment, to this object of attraction (and not too little affection), to this circulating banter (in which you also attempt to plumb the depths of desire the object might harbor for you; quite similar to that "cold-cold-hot-hot" game you played as a kid), to the dance of gestures (of hands: making a point in the air, running through the hair, alighting for the briefest moments on the most desirable locales of the face - lips, the shell of the ear; legs crossed and uncrossed, the curved ankle in a sensible open shoe tapping the heel against the floor), and to this sensation that you have woken to a dream (admit it: with that faintest residue of dread that instead of waking into a dream, whether you are still sleeping in a dark room, and watching something streak, briefly, brightly under your eye; the dread that like a touch of acid hides at the bottom of each of these wine-glassy nights). And the returning question: Is there anything more than this?
*Watch Sarah sing here **Download & listen to this song here
My Daily Notes
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After Midnight
The sea sleeps at your feet,
under your body, in your ear.
I sleep distant from the sea, and summon dreams from the distance
(as currents summon driftwood, remains of old caravels, matériel
cast overboard during all those past sinkings - slow and sudden)
to lap at the window where your eyes
- in which I now swim-sleep - scan
The sea of sleep, of possibility.
for K
My Poems
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