“Will the sobs from the cellars remain unheard to those of us lingering along this city's surface?” 

 On the wall of a metro station in Bangalore

1

 

It rained again, the second

time in the day. The fifth

in this month. It lasted for 

a few hours in the hushed

streets of night. The pharma-

ceutical store is alive: a 

bioluminescent island in 

the livid waters of stilled winds. 

 

2

 

The last metro is empty

in the rain: a streak of light

carving the shape of night. 

At each empty station 

the doors open, silence

enters — weight leaves. 

The doors close.

 

3

 

The night your lost memory

visited my heart: it was raining

as if the world was coming to 

an end. I woke up from sleep 

to call you. The phone rang

in a different dream.

 

4

 

As the rain beat down on 

the road, the streets 

swelled. The bone-biting 

winds from a different time

flipped the pages of a book 

of poems on climate change.  

 

5

 

In the wet darkness of a 

bygone era's night, 

on the road that ramified 

as an anxious thought, 

a silence wrote a plea to

the night. 

 

6 

 

The city was closing down. 

He said ‘It’s strange 

to believe that everything 

will be a memory by tomorrow, 

a blur of imagination’

 

 

(tekst: to send someone a text message)

 

It’s as if you are breathing 

right next to my ears — 

unburdening sounds of meaning

between pauses and sighs. 

I can listen to your lips quiver,

the slow rustle of leaves to 

the splash of a wet wind. 

I can feel your eyes

(I don’t see them, I don’t dare to) 

fixed on me with an intent 

of the reader of a classic novel. 

Your palms flying in air, 

Your legs crossed (or stretched?), 

your hair dancing like alphabets —

 

It’s raining outside,

raining in chunks of silence.

 

 

 

1

 

Enamoured, I read your text. 

It's a whole package of letters

a scandal of hope, a voice

without lips. 

 

2

 

I release your name in puffs

of smoke. It makes an ever 

growing 'O' moving upwards - 

only to dissolve with the sky and 

when it later rains

 

The entire land will be full of 

'O's, reverberating your name. 

 

3

 

I send her a voice message. 

I use my favourite endearment. 

She never texts me back. 

I know that she's just chuckling

on the other side of the heart. 

 

4

 

She asks me to write a poem. 

 

'What is there to take away from 

immortality 

but a cruel condemnation

to be locked in time forever?' I tell her. 

 

5 

 

Your farewell message

is the last whisper

that lands as a space-shuttle

in the complex

landscapes of ear.

 

 

 

 

It was in the bar late night 

everything was shutting down 

In a heavy tone, he said 

'I will die in the season of autumn 

in the last song of leaves, when, 

the sky comes alive to winds of 

forsaken screams. In an untimely rain, 

on a road, where protests are 

unheeded, and life is but a 

passing dream. 

I will die, like everyone else, talking 

in sleep, cursing the world, derisive, 

smiling in middle for the joke, 

the laughingstock everything is 

reduced to, self-respect commodified, 

the nightmare it has all became. 

I have counted the number of pegs I drink, 

number of cigarettes I smoke, and I know 

the day I die, it's in the middle of 

an inglorious procession, in the busiest road; 

The municipality will clear off 

my cadaver, and dispose it with 

the remnants of this civilisation' 

 

 

The old room is where you find the treasure of left behind books.

The old home is where you smell the names of lost relatives. 

The old friend is the one who speaks of forgotten trees. 

The old shirt is the time machine that frames you in a photograph.

The old lover is the one who speaks to you in utter silence. 

The old book is where you find what you have lost in time. 

The lost relative is the one who knows your date of birth. 

The old smell is the source of all smells you have longed to smell. 

The lost key opens a forgotten trunk box with perfumed letters. 

The last minute is when you think you know nothing about life. 

The old life is when you don't know what happens in the last minute. 

The old window opens into a landscape where you were wounded as a kid. 

The old phone is where the ghosts of all the lovers exist. 

The old cat is the one that left you before you know you are alone. 

The old bag is where you discover a thing about yourself you don't know.