New York Ghazalesque
Two aliens meet in New York
Over two glasses of beer.
One recites a ghazal in Hindustani,
The other maps the geographies
He had forgotten and lost In the pauses between One sher and the next, Each of which he finds his breath
Inaudibly repeating in his drunk throat. Heartsick, his tongue grows heavy And slurs even his adopted language, Only in which he can now say:
“This is wonderful” or this (Which was left unsaid): “I wish I could enter that country In which you can still stand in,
Here in New York, if only To say I am sorry, I have lost All languages in which saying “I Love you” wouldn’t sound so false”.
Note: Written after finally meeting Anand, the poet of many cities, on a rainy New York night.
My Poems
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Reading of a Horoscope
"Your mind is still in a haze,
but your heart is starting
to find some clarity", pronounces
today’s psychic forecast.
Sunlight dazzles on the floor, on the slender spines of unread books of poems heaped there, as the crouched mind watches for fresh clearances in the heart in which the word can be seeded again, in which the forge can be fired again, and the thawed hands can fashion again a table, a plate, a bottle, a loaf of bread, a place of rest in these years of un-rest.
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Winter Fragments
Flakes in the black oak nerves,
Memories in the hard cold body,
Scrawled spine arching for absent fingers,
Bach and forecasts of snow with radio static,
And a cardinal's red daub twisting and turning
In the wind’s maw.
My Poems
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