THE STUNTED RACE

The little chips of time
we spent together,
pop up on the margin of memory
and tell stories history will never record.
They are so much part of history
though, that made and unmade
the world around me, but I was no more
than a component of history.
I wore them like shirts to a party,
felt honoured, claimed privileges,
and flaunted my class.
I hardly recognised they were
price of a million years loneliness,
designed to cut another million short,
and take me out of the race.
When I looked in the mirror
I saw two faces, and admired them,
while you wanted me to see a single face.
Today I see a single face,
scarred, haggard, and scared.
I know you couldn’t have forced on me
what I couldn’t have retained;
You couldn’t have called to your banquet
a dirty traveller, who revelled
in wayside inns to leisurely sip
a second round champagne.

But when I was beginning to see the day,
you called it a day.


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POEMS ON HIS SMILE

You told me, “See me within yourself,
“If you would save me”.
But I loved to see you
Walk unto me, ask for my letter
And smile before you pass on.

Today when the marbles tell me
You will no more walk unto me, and smile,
I know You have walked into me,
Marbles and all, and smile
At my letter before I write.


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I see two dawns everyday;
One that comes behind the hills,
Rolls down the tree-tops
Fills the dark-and-blue sky
With gold-pink-and-blue.

The other,
When I stand before you –
A new light fills me,
The darkness of doubt and disappoint
Thaws into liquid hope,
And I am remade for the day.

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How do you smile like that !
Eyes smaller, and sharper,
Lips wide, topped by puddles,
And the whole face a ripple of joy.
You drown me in it,
You uphold me to float on it;
You possess me in a hug,
And absorb me does a cotton-ball.

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