Kingslay Gunatillake, The Temple of Wisdom, Used books & Brass statues. Courtesy of Blueprint 12
Love for Loneliness
The rooster eyes the horizon
In its misty dreams of dawn.
Down stares the sleepy horizon
At the seducing dawn
Which fans out its celestial wings,
To lure the rooster forward
To give its proverbial call.
Cast in my solitude full of woe,
I scan the horizon for signs
That might herald a melody
Of hope and a new dawn,
But the sky is grey,
And when I peer inside myself,
Eying me is my loneliness.
My loneliness will forever
Keep vigil day and night
At my tomb, as my identity
Has no meaning in the absence
Of the echoes of my loneliness
That I have prized with love
In the legacy of my verses.
A Web of Coyness
She weaves in slow motion
Her web of shadowy coyness.
With loving eyes
My gaze dribbles over her,
And when she stings me
With joy, I pretend to weep,
And while she sleeps, angelic
In her mellow dreams,
With coyness I gaze at her.
I have lived a peaceful life
Of which she is its merriment,
Its turmoil so lucid.
Composed in taints of shyness,
Multicolored are her moods.
The music I crave to create
Would merge in a movement
Synchronized with her tones,
In tune with her coy shades.
Like a deer, I stand resigned
On the line of her slaughter,
And at the altar of our love
She uncovers her eyes.
From under her enigmatic veil,
Her knife is unsheathed.
Struck by her hypnotic gaze,
Enamored but lifeless, I fall.
Not a drop of blood is shed.
A Lover’s Last Hope
Lovers are many on the streets,
Each with the stories they own,
In which regrets are many.
Besieged is the heart by pain,
So why not embrace it tightly
Before it wanders into the mist
And slithers along the crossroads
To weave an uncut network of webs
In our minds switched off with reality,
And debate in silence the reasons
For debacles and helplessness
That have bloomed on the streets
As none wants to talk about the love
That, though disrobed, must still meet
The essence of its tragic glory.
But by chance if it has a pinch of green,
Why store it in a dungeon
If we can plant it in the open?
The residual green might breathe again
If love still bristled in its shoots.
Tears of Awe and Joy
The swells and dips of classical music
Betray pristine valleys of love
And the emotions of sun-kissed meadows.
In its arms euphonic and sensual,
In awe my eyes fill with tears.
This music has an ardent fire
That burns inside my heart,
Yet freezes in the cool of the moon,
And burns fiercely in the chimneys
Before trickling into peaceful embers.
Tenderness and yearnings flow.
A newborn fawn drinks its mom's milk.
Ducklings and their mother are in a pond.
Carefree love has taken me in its fold,
And joy unearths with a salvo of my sobs.
The tears stream down my cheeks
Like lava flowing down the slopes
Of a volcano in eruption,
Whose tides build up like a swirling pool
To spill out of my eyes.
The Untended Garden
If only I had passed by earlier
The garden would be tended
And its flowers would be smiling,
Awakening longings in my heart.
The garden is in a state of decay.
The weather has been harsh.
Canals and water pumps ran dry,
But my eyes have not an arid instant.
I look for flowers to make a bouquet
To offer to my love, lost in her dreams,
But I could embellish not even one
That would attune with her lonely smile.
I own the onus of my life, a faltering future.
My heart might succumb at its next quake.
Love for her will nest in my veins forever.
Forlorn, I wait for her to deplore my departure.
These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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