This afternoon along with sudden rain, I will have a poem and a friend.

This afternoon along with wet earth, I will have a voyage in the gutters of memory, rushing like detritus into a sea of forgetting that faraway country of faces which perhaps still keeps time with the wheel of change.

This afternoon along with grinning thunder, I will have a seat by a flickering lamp, that almost goes out with every crash and whose yellow flame frames a pair of eyes which peer (if not lovingly gaze) at this water logged landscape: my soul.

This afternoon along with flailing branches I will have fields of freshly fallen snow, wrong thing wrong season, over which a madrigal circles like a red tail hawk. Its talons carry the shape and touch of those cold hands, which still caress my windy sleep.

This afternoon along with this thick rain and this freshly written poem, I will have

An old friend.

2003:07:10 15:30 Atlanta

Here we stand, after so many assignations, strangers after all. So how many more encounters till we become friends?

When will the spotless verdant spring return? And how many monsoons are required to wash our bloodstains away?

Numerous are the wounds of our love which has now lapsed. And unforgiving are the dawns that came after those forgiven nights.

What our hearts wished, our splintering hearts gave no respite to be fulfilled. Nor could we voice our complaints as lovers cajolingly do.

You went to tell them all this, Faiz, in your set of clean simple lines. But even after you did, what you wanted to tell remains untold after all.

Sashi,

Very good new poems--they are full of turns and surprizes, passion, a truly poetic imagination. Onward!

Cheers, Tom