A Strange Rain

Nogent Sur Oise, Criel in the background

The same panoramic view,

The texture now drowsy

And now resplendently new—

The providence of mother busy—,

Before the same two dull eyes

Now blood-shot, now morbidly dyed.

It’s the rain of today

Like the rare expo of mother’s skill

Languidly falling bigger drops, say

Like beaded curtain in rolling drill

But the ripples of distant tiny drops

Myriad, entangled like flurry of hopes—

To live now or stuck out there;

To value it or to be swept away

Into myriad eternity yonder,

Uncertainty flickers at murky bay.

Even so attached tomorrow

Like a formless desperate crow.

Nay I can look out there

Or have such intertwined plans.

Nay, even for a second, I dare

Think that I of such swimming clan.

Say coward. Yes, I am but dreamer

I am but so preposterous for you—

As I dream

Off the ground of flurries,

So novel yet so outrageous.

One Day

It’s only the turn of time—

This time you,

Gone yet heavier and more obsessed,

The narrow dark corridor speaks,

The shrill breezes with the drizzle wail,

The glistening yet dewy life

As brittle as an egg.

I remain,

Grossly existent yet lighter and adrift,

The flying time whispers,

The dying soul laments,

The slipping dreamy realities

As hectic as the senseless machine.

So could be seen from Sylvain’s meditative ironies,

More than usual rites of marihuana-shot reverie.

So his 13 years old son Christope’s ironic lightness,

‘He, Patrick, has gone forever,’

Followed by pointing towards the grey-dark sky

Above the silhouette of the nearby wooded ridge

That could be seen from the open window.

It was middle-aged Patrick,

The crippled ex-army,

Who had seen the world,

As per through his military posts.

His sedateness cost him,

Even during the cruel stroke?

His broken English,

The two treasured photo albums,

Told me that far about him.

He was a drummer,

His band mostly Philippines,

‘The good persons’ as he said.

With my prayers,

As I do wish,

I hope this broken piece,

Would preserve his fleeting image ever

Marked by his English,

‘How are you? Good?

I am good. Thank you.’

How his brooding plus loneliness,

Despite usual carousal with the pockmarked aged Muslim guy,

Could be detected by such as I,

Rawness plus self-search shot?

The aged Muslim guy

(Sorry I don’t know his name yet),

My next door one,

Now with more of himself:

‘On doit partir un jour,’ I tried my French.

‘C’est, c’est,voila, un jour,’ he said.

He meant to draw attention of Sylvain and Christope

Both my broken French and the gist

That regaled his searching heart at the moment.

It was he who had found out

After pounding repeatedly on the russet painted door

On that day and the previous.

More through his gesticulations

Like slicing the void at his will

I got thus,

I felt something of true self—

Bereft of any prejudices.

Now, as late Patrick was alone in this murky world,

With no one all gone as from the Muslim guy,

Who could be an ex-army as well,

The old sycamore claims,

Through how many hard seasons,

As the only one, more than the today’s full moon there,

Who still stands next by the strip of new road.

The narrow dark corridor is darker,

Pregnant with whizzing obsession

Yet still and to wade across,

The mystery of life by the death.