Naked

I wonder why I somehow favored to write in those broken free verses with odd rhymes that tried hard to get fitted at the ends of those lines…!

 

A sort of rustle,

A sort of shudder,

A cry after all,

I found those stripped feeble trees

Around and crowded on those low ridges like odd bosoms

Forced to chaff their own thin multi-twigs one another,

The tormentor, the formless shrilly voice sharp-cool

Blowing sporadically to move them into a groaning cemetery-dance.

The untimely or timely fresh buds like a cub’s claws,

How ill-fated exposed to seasonal cruelty—

May they come out as the whimpering bearers’ wishes

To adorn them and to grow into their own, the posterity!

Can a sincere prayer be responded?

A sort of self-image,

A sort of self-understanding,

A feeling after all.

The saints, the escaped ones, are those grey pigeons

Attached on to the steep ridge-roof of that four storey maison

With steep gables, reddish mud-tiles roof, unpainted chimney stacks,

The two little attic windows capped with the same tawny mud-tiles roof.

Taking a round nearby, they hover over it, land on it and remain there.

Their days seem to be in complete musing pose

Except a random habit, the dark little beaks on the swiveling necks

Poking at an itchy spot on the back…

Real in peace, but where do they return at night?

They draw this stare,

Again today there they’re,

In complete placid pose.

Or the tomb yard overrunning the slope,

The tidy glossy marble panels

Inscribed memories and the flowers…

Are they bound here for those gone ones?

The only clothed one,

The odd cedar with three prime branches

Without any scent but flaunting at the odd time.

The stripped ones and semi-stripped hedges numbed,

The odd fans for its peremptory call.

And oddity as naked as ignorance.