Exile

 

Thomas Toft

As a man approaches thirty he may

take stock of himself.

Not that anything important happens.

–

At thirty the mud will have settled:

you see yourself in a mirror.

Perhaps, refuse the image as yours.

–

Makes no difference, unless

you overtake yourself. Pause for breath.

Time gave you distance: you see little else.

–

You stir, and the mirror dissolves.

Experience doesn’t always make for knowledge:

you make the same mistakes.

–

Do the same things over again.

The woman you may have loved

you never married. These many years

–

you warmed yourself at her hands.

The luminous pebbles of her body

stayed your feet, else you had overflowed

–

the banks, never reached shore.

The sides of the river swell

with the least pressure of her toes.

–

All night your hand has rested

on her left breast.

In the morning when she is gone

–

you will be alone like the stone benches

in the park, and would have forgotten

her whispers in the noises of the city.

R. Parthasarthy

Trust

Pexels

Oh we've got to trust

one another again

in some essentials.

Not the narrow little

bargaining trust

that says: I'm for you

if you'll be for me. -

But a bigger trust,

a trust of the sun

that does not bother

about moth and rust,

and we see it shining

in one another.

Oh don't you trust me,

don't burden me

with your life and affairs; don't

thrust me

into your cares.

But I think you may trust

the sun in me

that glows with just

as much glow as you see

in me, and no more.

But if it warms

your heart's quick core

why then trust it, it forms

one faithfulness more.

And be, oh be

a sun to me,

not a weary, insistent

personality

but a sun that shines

and goes dark, but shines

again and entwines

with the sunshine in me

till we both of us

are more glorious

and more sunny.

D H Lawrence

Dreams

 

Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft,

mocking magnets, graphs, and maps—

in a split second the dream

piles before us mountains as stony

as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains

with perfect infrastructures.

Without engineers, contractors, workers,

bulldozers, diggers, or supplies—

raging highways, instant bridges,

thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen—

crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us

and when to vanish.

Without architects deft in their craft,

without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers—

on the path a sudden house just like a toy,

and in it vast halls that echo with our steps

and walls constructed out of solid air.

Not just the scale, it’s also the precision—

a specific watch, an entire fly,

on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers,

a bitten apple with teeth marks.

And we—unlike circus acrobats,

conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists—

can fly unfledged,

we light dark tunnels with our eyes,

we wax eloquent in unknown tongues,

talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.

And as a bonus, despite our own freedom,

the choices of our heart, our tastes,

we’re swept away

by amorous yearnings for—

and the alarm clock rings.

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books,

the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,

the doctors with couches for analyses—

if anything fits,

it’s accidental,

and for one reason only,

that in our dreamings,

in their shadowings and gleamings,

in their multiplings, inconceivablings,

in their haphazardings and widescatterings

at times even a clear-cut meaning

may slip through.

Wisława Szymborska