Anniversaries
The bright night is a lovers’ gift
Impulsive, expansive, holding within it
An oceanic depth, a horizonless breadth
Vanishing even as it is passed from
One’s hand to the other’s. The giving
Is all. Its light has seeped into
Your hair and mine, a silvering.
As the dogs play and the children
Laugh, the path lays itself beneath
Our feet. In the windless skies there is
A delivering. In the running waters
The sparkle of promise is sweet.
Orange
A word for which there is no rhyme.
And why would there be? I give you, instead,
A thousand words, yet none approximate
The elusive sublime that is the
Crunch of salt on the plate, the crisp
Of the browned edge, the translucent gloss
On the yolk, the promise of fullness on
The sun-soaked slice. Indeed, the
Transience of the cherry blossoms on the
Spring-time blue say more about freshness than
Any words could do, and yet, line for line,
There is no verse equal to the limpid shine
That will leave its fragrance on your fingers
Long after its gone. No, the sublimity of
The unrhymable is felt in what lingers long
After all rhyming is done.
A Table of Contents
I hadn’t seen the house. He hadn’t seen
The table. We were buying momentous
Things for a future in which we’d never
Been. “Bigger,” he said, “tell them to make it
Wider and longer!” “Where will we place it?”
I said, looking at the dimensions he’d sent us.
But the size of a table depends on more than
How many sit. My parents knew – if you
Build it they will come. And we did. Their
Table held more than ever lived in that
House. There was always room, food,
Conversation. And now we live in self-
Isolation. And the too-big table draws
Together our meagre four – with our
Violins, our laptops, our books, tools, papers
Our cat, puzzles, painting projects – more,
In fact, a binding and gathering of ourselves
To ourselves, a tabling of a core.
Walk me a night
Walk me a night
When the chill is on the trees
Walk me a night
When no words hang in the breeze
Stroll me a winter where
The snowlines light the way
Draw me through forests when
Bark skins sing the day. But paint
Me no pictures of landscapes brown
And green. I have no faith in colours
That my heart has never seen.
How to Paint a Cloud: A Valentine’s Day’s Sonnet
Its harder than it looks; it isn’t just
White on blue. The underpainting lies
Beneath the dark as well as the light.
It really isn’t a matter of just
Slathering on the white. In fact,
By far the harder thing to do
Is coming away from the bright shades
With greys and burnt umbers and you
Must remember that the brush moves
Always from dark to light dark to light.
Love must be a lot like that, you think
Preparing your canvas just right. But really
Love is just one of the tiny, curvy vees
A bird winging itself into sight.
Let It In
You leave in the winter and return
In the spring – a week later, but the
Burn of ice has given way to the wing
Of blue that blazes the day – and a bowl
Of white tulips is on the table. They
Wave in all directions, as if to say, ‘whole
Snowstorms have passed into these blooms.
The seasons don’t really change. In a way,
Spring is a price Winter is willing to pay,
To finally gain entrance into your rooms.’
Shipwreck at Djúpalónssandur
Ships on the horizon
Grey as the seagulls wing
The sky frothy white
Separates the living
From the free.
For some years now
Sails have troubled the waters
Their pointing heads
Drawing lines on
Shapeless fields.
How will we do
When we cannot watch from land
Like ancient swords
Our effaced edges
Belie our collective intent.
Burnt Sienna
It appears I’ve always lived in raw umber
With just the right amount of jesso. The
Canvas of my life lying under the
Colours of a palette mixed just so. Each
Shade a version of grey – luxurious oodles
Of white changed by a tiny dab of black. I
Wonder at the palette knife smoothing it
Down, not too sharp, no need to hack and
Carve away the artificial bright. They say
It allows the painter to create the many
Shades of light. I get it, I think. Until the time
That we run out of umber and use burnt
Sienna instead. My sleeping skin has turned
Blue. It is dazzling, not like skin but wine.
Suddenly it looks like anyone’s arm but
Mine. Maybe I should have painted by
Numbers, stuck with bases of raw umbers,
Lived dumb and painted dumber. Anything
Rather than confront this blue skinned person –
My raw-umber life’s burnt sienna version.
Giti Chandra 