Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Night

Some days
Ok, cut that and make it most days
Or even, all days

I would like to go to sleep
Serenaded 
Not by the bark of a dog
Or the roar of engines
(That, most particularly)
Or the whistle of pressure cookers
But by the gentle sound
Of a river flowing by
And the chherful chirping
Of crickets

Some day I would like to go to sleep
Not in the harsh glare of a tungsten bulb
Or several thousand of them
Not in the half-light which remains 
In the city,  in any case 
Despite me and mine switching off
All our lights
But in deep, dark, liquid black of the night

Some day I would like
To be lulled to sleep
Not by the smell
Of the aftertaste of cooking
But the free growing gardenias
The parijats and the raat ki ranis
That light up the heart and soul

Some day when I am startled
In the middle of the night
I would like to open my eyes
Not to rows and rows and rows
Of houses
Each as concrete
And mundane as the other
But to the vast night skies
Full of twinkling stars

Some day when I lie restless
And my soul yearns for
Something I cannot name 
A bit of magic, a bit of poetry
And I walk out to calm down
I would like to wander
Not up and down the stairs
Nor fidget inside
The four walls of my room
But stroll
In a moonlit garden
Or forest
Or riverside
And feast my eyes on
The silver sights
Where all is black and white and grey
Where nothing had colors 
But they don't seem to miss it
And instead glow
With a faint, otherworldly irridiscence 

Yes, someday I would like to
Drink upon this scene
And let my soul rest
And recuperate
From the harsh, 
Beauty-less world
That is my reality
A world robbed of nature
And what it could do for the soul

As usual, I ask myself
How much of my imagination
Is a romanticizing
Of things I have never experienced
And how I would react
To these things if
They really happened

Bu today,
I brush that question aside

Today, merely
I think and I imagine
And I drown and I enjoy
The thought of these sights

Some day, 
I would like to see
Fireflies bloom
In the dead of the night

No comments:

Post a Comment