hark the distant cry
of autumn wind,
the bird-wing slap
on trembling ripples.
plaintive notes
murmur from hollow reeds,
the call of wild ducks
chants the way homeward,
moon shadows of night-time beckoning.
tears from my eyes
trail through the carbon sink.
The old dog scratches at the small graveside
Parakeets, jade bright and lit
with watery sunrise lean swiftly
to their reflections
as they soar through dawn,
born seemingly from the tongue
like twirl of willows and a tangle
of dun branches that trail
the river and its way.
All night they have sat here-
the girl, the birds and the boy,
blanket wrapped and waiting,
sleep snuggled and cooled.
The blush of the world at bay
and its formal carnations lost
amongst the damp scent of weeds,
clambering and clustering the banks.
Then the rush of fish; salmon, leaping,
flying through the water to spawn,
to live and to die amid such brightness
and to be reborn.
More at https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com.
Dying is likely the end of our script
We find out first hand Was That It?
No credible idea has ever been found
No reports from the no-longer-around
Many guesses about upcoming events
Thermodynamics, recycled elements
And unvetted myths about the Paths To Glory
We’re dying to know Is there more to the story?
Stay tuned and find out
That night the light was slow
A faint glimmer before a brighter burn.
The singed green shade twisting
in the faint breeze mouthed
through half open windows.
I’d got up, too hot to sleep,
too tired really, for those ends
of things that tangle a mind’s
late thoughts
when a moth traced the vagueness
at the corners of the room.
Its confusion crashing at the walls,
the brightness its beacon,
and then its silhouette inside the stretched
satin shade seemed muffled
and drawn large as those paper puppets
in shadow theatres of old preconfiguring
its own demise and fizzed throes
of death as staged and restaged tragedies.
Then the stench of absence and heat
was all; a universe swallowed whole.
Shutting the light off, I stumble to the stairs
that fall into the dark, wheeling.
A twinkling sea
And sand in
This morning’s
Spectacular
Display for
Our pleasure.
This foaming,
Bubbling land
Smiles at me.
For our leisure
Is the source of
Our vernacular.
The daily grind
We left standing
In the bitter cold
As we’ve traveled
Long and hard far
Away from home
Before we’re too old
To fully enjoy landing
Beside palms sublime.
For we never truly know
When the ending starts,
And ultimately unravels,
As we are as sand in time.
Life would depart
Leaving the body lying on earth
Someone would cry
Someone would laugh
I would keep watching everything
I won’t die
At the death of my body
I stay alive
For long
(Translated from assamese by Bibekananda Choudhury)
It was like the sweep of land seen from ships
Coursing the misted bay and calling through the night
Like safety all at once spilling from our lips
And carrying us ashore, beaten by light
And salt bitten tides; the murmured orisons
Of promises. Whispered and held in hand.
Forbidding and tempting purple as damsons
Encrypting love to coded lore to hold
And ever have. Sold as pomegranate seeds
And pink jewelled life until death splits even bold
Stateless minds beyond and all knowledge bleeds
And prowls to devour this harboured hold,
This plaited harvest ring; this wedded band.
This new love that wraps us whole. This new land.
More at https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com/.
O lovely flowers! incessant redolence! with what colorful aroma and sweetness and light of eminence my brio loves scattering the seeds of prestige!
All the hours of the day
I spend in the garden of flowers,
Consoling my all lethargy,
Endowing me spirits of euphoria
Oh, how it solaces and spirits my body! Hark! in what music and rhyming,
Awakes my soul,
Rises the whiff of beds of roses,
Bees, butterflies, all things
Adore them in their kinds
Thus all are innate in sanctified music and tranquility, the great knell of nature.
O let me live
When I die!
The soul surceased
by an hour, like not seeing a shooting star
Oh my heart aches
Deep inside me,
I, inhumed in a hole dug
in the ground,
As yet with a deep aroma of flowers,
In my life beyond the grave.
When time
takes away the color from the green-leafed nature
– it will return.
When time
touches the human so heavily
– a memory will remain.
But when
the death-dealing people
take the breath away,
besides memories,
remain questions,
– Why?
– What for?
– In the name of what faith
does a Human kill a Human?
(Translated by Artur Komoter.)
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as bones dry
tears irrigate landscapes
blushed cheeks,
running creeks
of mascara blues
dark shadows oversee
graveyards of feelings
and epitaphs of irony
form words on stone monuments to the dead
fantasies
of forever intended “i do’s”
i walk through this silent storm
during partially moonlit nights
and think of you, and you and you
and find no words
to etch into my stone-cold memory
for you or you or you
three shadows follow me along the walk
and my hand draped limply at my side
no ghosts i want to hold onto
just gnarled fingers of pain disfigured
dreams
as bones dry
as bones dry
i cry to no one in particular
and then gather my tears like ashes in an urn
and toss them over my shoulder
moving on
thankful for that minuscule slit of moonlight
that stuck around for the finale.