Nostalgia

I long for people who have gone,

Picture them in my mind

Retrieve their gestures, voice, something said, someone,

Quickly search for their photographs,

Letters full of their autographs,

Friends, cousins, uncles and aunts,

Those with whom I laughed

And joked and quarreled

They are all there in a video

Of a marriage long ago

That revives their memories

As if they were here, those moments

Captured for eternity as I join them

From the present into the past;

I pause it to watch

Them dance and jest

And rewind to refresh the moments again

So full of life and health and cheer,

The list grows longer and longer, the pain

As I last beyond their years

And they return in my dreams

Till I wake up at last

And find they are only memories

Of people who once were so real;

Maybe I have lived too long

As most of those I knew

Have left and are gone.

The Fortress

 

T  H  E        F  O  R  T  R  E  S  S 

 

This darkness that arises to shut out

a whole set of stars,

This shipness,

Which in the day the aspect  of the rough

round rocks assumes,

Hewn out of their part,

Is the dust which was molded into me,

The fortress that defended us,

Deserted and silent now deserting us,

As our lineage drifts from its sinking,

Into another world of fortlessness.

 

Yet it is kin.

Its rain-battered blacknesses

Elephantal,

Draws me in

As it does

The roads from afar;

Astride the past into which I am homing,

Banner resplendant

And as I depart,

Diminishing mammothly into a significant speck,

Which will faithfully arise again if I return,

Or yet remain gigantic

In some sure corner of the converting world

Within me,

Defending.

 

Mother’s Day: VISIT

                                              

                                   My poem for Mother’s Day:

 

                                                   V I S I T

 

                                      Shall I paint her portrait

                         Or keep it in pieces, dim and dark undone;

                              Shall I put together a jigsaw figure

                          Who has gone to pray in the Himalayas

                       And presently will return, as we were told?

 

                             She must feel cold on a blue glacier.

 

                                           But I remember,

                                      She was warm and frail

                            Beautifully familiar on a carry- chair

                         Lifted on dark strong porter’s shoulders

                                  To the fearful steaming train.

 

                           Up the quick flight of steps to visit her –

                    The apartment was the same, the curtains hung

                             The same fan spun; our heart beats

                       Filled the empty room with promise and fear.

 

                                Quietly a voice behind intoned:

                                ‘She has gone to the Himalayas’,

 

                                 And through the curtains shone

                                        A steady summer’s sun

                                        And on the counterpane

                                                 A blue glacier.