MOHIT MITRA Poet Lyric

Borrowed Sight

Rain ciphered kingdoms on the classroom pane;
The lesson reckon'd dynasties and years.
I read one silence gathering from the rain,
Whose grammar legislated mortal tears.
Thy sentence ended where all voices start;
Its period enter'd jurisdiction's heart.

Whilst others husbanded remembered reigns,
I follow'd where thy commas learn'd to wait;
The soot adjudged the innocence of flames,
Bread broke the ancient commonwealth of fate.
One widow smooth'd the collar of the dead;
The morning wore the movement of her thread.

No sceptre first instructed me in thee.
The basin tutoring daylight was enough;
A sparrow wrestled dawn from one bare tree;
An old man button'd winter from his cuff.
The least occurrence, suffer'd into sight,
Became the eldest article of light.

I breathed thee till the weather alter'd blood;
The hedge grew eloquent with patient thorn;
The kettle reason'd softly with the wood;
Dust kept the parish register of morn.
No doctrine pass'd between thy page and mine;
The world itself declin'd into thy sign.

What chancery within thy seeing dwelt,
That grief stood straighter merely being known?
The stone remember'd what the river felt;
The leaf preserv'd the argument of stone.
Roots, litigating darkness into dew,
Obtained the earth by never proving true.

Then noon mislaid the covenant of noon.
A rook arriv'd before it chose to fly.
The river recollected April's moon;
Frost harvest'd orchards waiting in July.
Nothing proclaim'd the alteration done;
The market open'd underneath the sun.

Only the ordinary had grown strange—
Not by addition, subtraction, or disguise,
But by a quiet, jurisdictional change
Within the ancient magistracy of eyes.
The page dismiss'd thy hand; thy seeing stay'd,
Seeking another mortality for aid.

Signatures migrate by the faith of sight.
Ink is their briefest and least faithful home.
They leave the hand the instant they give light,
And through another pulse elect to roam.
Thus every dawn I never learnt to feign
Returns thy weather through another brain.

Therefore, if any ask by what design
I dare speak near the precincts of thy name,
I shall not answer scholarship nor shrine,
Nor purchase kinship with inherited fame.
I answer only what the years made true—

"I own your signature."

Not ink.

But that unborrowable way the world
At last consented to appear.

♡Like0

Share Poem

---

Post Comments

Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.

Please Login to post a comment