No smiling, were the instructions for the
Model. He tried to straighten his face. It took
A few tries and even so, the laugh lines will
Add a twinkle that won’t be easy enough to
Trace. Make sure there is enough light and some
Decent shadowing, we were told. So we went
Into the kitchen where the evening sun kindles
The homey concatenation of appliances and plants
Candles and bowls, things to use and things to
Hold, into scattered embers and points of shine.
‘Be careful what you place the subject against.’
The kitchen wall, canary yellow, carries well the
Slants and flow of light. So bright, the green-grey
Eyes that look straight into mine. The gold-brown
Dwindles, puts up a good-natured fight with the
Twenty-two years, the encroaching white. I know
My brush will never catch the warmth of the
Shadows, how they’re just another kind of
Glow. But this portrait is just beginning and I’m
Really more than willing to keep it simple and
Take it slow.
Author: Giti
I am merely the admin of this blog. It belongs to all the wonderful community of writers who write and read here.
As ever, my last poem of April for Anannya
I’ll spare you the metaphors of flowers, we
Are all April phools after all. And I’ll desist
From images of gardens and blooming and
Other such, because this one is for Anannya
But also for all of you – all of us, who resist
The stifling of words, the impossibility of
Poetry. To all the pictures of loveliness
That we have sent each other, I add this,
Of lilies. Because they so proudly proclaim
So shamelessly confess to their beauty.
Like trumpets, each head, triumphant
In its glory – and yet, you can close
Your eyes and breathe in its story. Each
Unique, each like its other, they are a
Cluster of gratitude, a world together.
The lily and the amaltas – a May Day labour of love
Fill your lungs with marvel, a wonder
Full of exaltation. To breathe
Each open red heart into your own
A kind of beatitude. They toil not
Nor do they spin yet which of us is
Freed from this sin. I have other
Places I want to be and other flowers
I need to see other labours
That beckon to me so far away
Unreachable so deeply lodged within.
Hours spent in the work of hands when
Other homes and other lands bloom
Yellow, gold, and shades of fire.
Give me an ecstasy of scents or
Bring me a fiery magnificence
But grant me no special beneficence
From this cleaving desire.
Vista
:a pleasing view;
:a mental vision of a succession of remembered or anticipated events.
The dignity of lamps lights them still
Even when felled. The freshly dug pits
Receive them with the compassion of
A mass grave for unaccommodated
Humankind. Their roots do not flail
Naked, expelled from earthy homes.
Their heads do not bow, bending and
Leafy, green amidst sandstone
Domes. No cry no shout no wail
Of iron links sundered from brass
Headed rail no sound of an ending.
So silent, this raising of dust in the
Awkward extraction of the mighty
Stout-as-stone heart of a nation.
Where grief, quiet as smoke,
Stands sentinel, asking neither
Elegy nor pity for the vast cremation
Ground that is this city.
On letting my kid go to the volcano from which she brought back fresh lava
It hurts you when you hold it. Resentful
Of your thin skin your nerves that scream
Your wondering fingertips wincing
Along crevices. Not ready to take its place
As a hard sharp thing. Birth is difficult, the clean
Hot liquid womb a descent full of forcing
Out. And however cautiously you brace
Yourself, children are so hard to set
Free. Distrustful of your squeamish care.
So beautiful it hurts when your forge it.
In this almost-Spring, a hammering out
In the smithy of creating, a laying bare.
On reading Yeats suddenly
I don’t much mind grey pavements. The sun
Is not the fiercest of my gods and I have many.
Alters abound about me where deities of various
Hue are summoned and when my prayers are done
They cluster about me. You might call it my
Bee-loud glade. Obeisance paid and worship due
Are the quiet desperation of battles hard-won.
Unmoored, deep-mired, sweet-sung, self-sired,
You are the way and the wayfarer and the tired
Kindness of strangers is sometimes the only boon
Granted. So we could arise, we could go now, but until
Peace comes dropping slow, perhaps some goddess
Of fire will rain yearning upon these pavements
Grey and in those pooling lakes we will build
Our cities of desire to guide the way.
Mr Joe has questions about online teaching
If not for sleeps why it made of sheet?
If not for rolls, nothing for pen is made.
If not for looks, why cat-butt cuter than screens?
If laptop made of warms, cat-sits made for laptops.
If not batshit crazy what means
Talking to zoom-thing lack-stops?
Zen and the Art of Smelly Sock Placement
It isn’t just that among the tulips, the matching
Napkins and scented candles, the wedding
China and newly shined floors, I left
Yesterday’s socks in my fancy artwork bowl.
Or even that in all the conversation amongst
Crystal and wine, silk frocks and fine
Cuisines, the subject of clothing and feet
Never once arose. Invite your guests
With care, my friend, but even this moral,
Howsoever neat, is not the regenerative end
Of this Easter tale. I’m hardly a novice at
The epic fail, but I’ll tell you this: if you arrange
Your evening like a still-life, every spoon
And plate, cushion and salad fork and knife
In intimate accord almost musical, the memento
Mori that keeps it real is, of all things beautiful
And true, the most brutally essential.
The Voices in my Head
Are so often from pages of books
That I have read. Somewhere in my
Youth or childhood, no doubt, spent
Buried in other people’s words rather
Than bringing the hills alive springing
About gamboling as a lamb to the
Tabor’s sound making my own rhythm
And rhyme. Twain’s best thoughts, he said,
Were stolen by the ancients, but mine
Are couched and cast in the impeccable
Words of the wise in my literary past. How
Then should I begin, as TSE asks, in this
Spencerian month of the death of the Bard and
So many others. It’s a mercy, perhaps, to
Think in more than one language. It’s hard
Enough to have English masterminded by
Bards with songs already sung. What a relief
That my kids are scolded only in their
Mother tongue.
Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Corona
It isn’t just the my right eyelid twitches
Or that sleep is a rumour started by people
Who could probably be found snoring standing
Up or in the middle of lunch or by the roadside
In ditches. It isn’t even that I don’t enjoy
Making Nonograms fifteen by fifteen in bed
At 2am or 4 or somewhere in between. It’s also
Not a huge deal that that my eyes get heavy and
I sometimes collapse headfirst into a meal. It’s
Just that sleep is supposed to knit the raveled sleeve
Of care and maybe its twiddling the knitting needles
Over its thumbs because it can’t find the wool
Of the lamb that is worried threadbare.
Giti Chandra 