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The Night it Rained in the City and other poems

The Night it Rained in the City and other poems

The Night it Rained in the City 


“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. 
 
 
The city was closing down. 
He said ‘It’s strange 
to believe that everything 
will be a memory by tomorrow, 
a blur of imagination’
 

Text 

 
(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.
 
 

For Her 

 
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. 
 
 
Your farewell message
is the last whisper
that lands as a space-shuttle
in the complex
landscapes of ear.
 
 
 

A Scene From a Bar in Anantapur 

 
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' 

 

An Old Poem 

 
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.


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