Ash and Water

So stubborn of you
not to appear, be so aloof.
Prince of long holidays —
body a jet of blood,
a ship of rage
and restlessness.

Loving absence, is that you?
Step on water, the path runs dark.
Ghost of phosphorent fate,
the self, powdered ash,
floating, sinking —
but never forgetting you.

Moon

One night, Banshilal Chaukidar, on his watch, looked at the moon and remembered when he had been a little boy his mother had often compared him with it.

“I was damn handsome then.” he thought.

“But now I am not,’ he concluded.

‘Now I am a temporary night guard for a housing full of real-estate agents, teachers and bad-tempered government officers. I have diabetes and carry a trembling hand and I am old. But I don’t have a right to sleep- not even when my body gives up in exhaustion and my mind starts to play funny tricks on me. I wish my mother had seen me now. She would have thought twenty times before comparing me with something so bright and faultless.”

Banshilal sighed while he tried to tame his hand.

An unexpected thought came to him after a while.

He thought, “Even if she could have known my future surely she wouldn’t have told me. I was the happiest thing that ever happened to her and for that she would have willingly lied to me. Just to remain cheerful for both of us. May be she was more helpless than I thought.”

Looking at that magnificent, silent, yellowish globule Banshilal began to laugh.