The last leaves fall down.
But his inscape is not bare.
Myriads of wild growths,
he’s pruned with shears.
His pupils blossom in the
distant desert too. But the
wind brings not only the
floral fragrance He’s a
lightship on the sea of
ignorance. His scarlet
desires lie frozen beneath
the moral cliff. Age and
efficiency aren’t always
correlative.Yet it’s time
for his funeral in service.
His knowledge will no
longer be ignited in the
classroom.That brass bell
will ring in his memory.
Retirement is foreign in
origin, unbecoming for his
indigenous passion. Robert
Frost’s two roads appear
again. He will make
another wise choice. To
retire to rest is to rust.
Dedicated to the protagonist in the poem, Mr.Sachidanandan T K.
First published in The Literary Hatchet.
apperception
an intuition
beyond form
instilled spontaneous
of the moment
a channel
of self conscious
convergence
a crystallisation
spoken aloud
indelibly inked forever
an interpretation
changing
according to mood
essentially fluid
inherently variable
illusive
as a shadow
The night sky that bade us bye
as the morning hue demystified;
that the stars had an hallucinating effect
eyes dilating to the heart's affect.
And now it beats and beats
like a babbling brook
like the rustling dunes
like the glistening chocolate mountains.
It feels so much and yet naught
it sees so much, all sought!
It breathes so much, breathless
senses, senseless...
And now the heart pounds
and now I shut my eyes
little drops, rainbow like
metamorphosed into a
beauty glistening down.
MUST I CALL YOU.....AGAIN?
Must I call you again, onlooker at my hurt,
Talking by the window, an inscape of wrecked
Solitude, impugned bad manners, and the curt
Commerce of refusal. Your blameless, decked
Hand of fate. Capitulation, a trade or pain
Of being alone. What mannered smile can lift
My woebegone future for the pull of rain
Making the shards of bright light shift
Away from wonderment, green-begetting magic?
An empowerment of the seeing eye inwards,
Making whole my patchwork, your solipsism so tragic,
In a smitten whorl of entire fate dragged skin-wards,
Renting with ache this sojourning material,
Glimpsing the light eternal, ethereal.
by Rosemarie Rowley
Published in IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
Birthed in scratches of white paint on deadly canvas,
Emerging from the womb-vessel of a faded sea
To face the barren inscape of my tenuous self.
The diaphragmic doorway only opens through infirmity;
Abstract sodomy on the mesa.
Tilting by the weight of my breasts, precariously
Above the plain – the welcome danger of oblivion.
Darkness is my safety and my fault.
Night on the mesa floats free – freedom is found in reflection,
But a sliver of a moon is yet too much.
My faded scream can only be heard by those who are bound.
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