I wonder why airports have
Such enormous glass walls.
As if the sky must be seen
In all its might before it is conquered.
As if this overwhelming blue
Must ultimately be mastered.
And the heavens undeterred
Allow us to think it true
That when we are enfolded
Embraced and blue-golded
It is we that rose and flew.
Category: poetry
The Letter and the Spirit
If not in letters, how else to catch
The spirit? If not in the slant
Of the hand, the dip and scratch
Of the pen, where other than
In the blotted and erased,
Is the reach of mind to mind,
Day to day, caught? If not
In boxes, how else to trap
Those years and longings,
Every secret in every scrap
With ‘Par Avion’, ‘Inland Mail’,
‘Personal’ and ‘Confidential’,
With stamps across the seas and
Seals with dates and details.
How urgently each sheet lays bare
Its need to breathe with, to share.
Love Poem
When we came out it was nearly eleven
There was still light in the sky
We found names for all the blues, seven
Shades between colour and hue
And how the ocean shone with the light
As if it glowed from within, dry
Fire burning like a secret heart, bright
As the lighthouse beam, turning and turning
Lighting the way home. And you
And I, Seeing ourselves outlined
In still black, against the churning
Always forever, always new.
“And all ye need to know”
Glass against glass set against the light
Of sharp winter suns on weary northern nights
Blinding as an interrogation too tired to resist
Answers that crash and burn like lies
But persist, behind the hand that shades the eyes.
There are always other resources
Than seeing as we must. Glasses to glasses
Trust to trust. Close your eyes, lower the blinds
Trust that each ray will bend and find
A transmuted beauty, a glory of glow
That’s enough for the night, sufficient to know.
Petitions
Governments are so often
Like blossoming pear trees.
I learnt this when I stood
One silent white summer
And thought of James Wright.
“Perfect, beyond my reach,
How I envy you.” he wrote.
“For if you could only listen,
I would tell you something,
Something human.” It smote
My just cause into dust. Trusting,
The petitioner stands, missing,
Often, the point of her own protest.
The government is not Yeats’s
“Great rooted blossomer”. The jest
Is on the trees, when you learn
That it is the heat, not the shade,
That frees.
Like a Bridge
What need of bridges, when waters
Are not troubled. When clear and calm
They lie in invitation to walkers
Of oceans, seas of glass, smooth
Reflections of feet, cool as balm.
What need of bridges when fear
Is a friend to float with, truth
In her face, cupped by the fjord,
Whose ripples touch your arm
In gentle laughter. What need
Of bridges, when the white slopes
Know that your drowned heart breathes
In so many crossings over, hopes
Of births while grieving deaths.
What need of bridges, when wonder
Holds the two shores asunder.
On First Discovering Pavarotti’s “Che faro…”
Orpheus, barred from Hades,
Like the lament of angels,
Or Euridice herself, where indeed
Could he go. Unmanned, unvoiced,
Unsaved by Death’s refusal, where
Indeed, without his love, without
Her song, when yearning has her
By the throat. Turn around, turn about,
Where else, indeed, with eyes for
Only her, blind, following only
The longing for her behind him,
How but to call in her own voice
How but in her own could she find him.
(Orpheus’s role is traditionally sing by an Alto, a woman’s voice)
Cinderella Makes An Appointment
I feel like my wit should be dry
Instead of my skin. My wallet fat
Instead of my shin. My vision far-reaching
Instead of my toes. (Indeed I often check,
When my feet are smelling, to make sure
That what is running, is my nose.)
I feel there’s no use dwelling
On heels, instead of in villas.
But it’s hard when you need a night
Out, and your feet are like Godzilla’s.
In the Society of Dead Poets
Good night, Sweet William
May flights of Princes sing thee
To thy rest.
There on the barge to Avilion
Sailing over the horizon’s crest
The children of the summers end
Gather in the dampened grass
Where the quality of mercy, like peace
Comes strained through the dust of stars.
Tilters at windmills all. Yeats said it best:
A terrible beauty is born with those who go
Where midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow.
Sonnet for Somniacs
Surely this is not jet lag.
I stare suspiciously at my unpacked bag.
It stares back at me, its one lock-eye steely.
Stupid little carry-on wheely.
Surely this is not middle age.
I wearily turn another page.
Reading at 4am just means I’m nerdy.
And besides, this book is so wordy.
Surely this is not anxiety.
That’s not a condition in which I would be.
Everyone has ailing parents, kids alone,
And I’m big boned, not osteo-prone.
Look at me: successful, happy, fat.
Sleep? It really isn’t all that!
Giti Chandra 