Gopal Lahiri: Poems

Riddle

I unearth riddles from my dreams
and lay bare the tiny scenes.

A knife is stuck in between,
searching the invisible pain,

That night on my table, the moon
stays silent, an owl glides past

the lonely star, my dark eyes roll
and find the silent universe.

I struggle every day, every night,
The canvas on the wall piles sharp shadows.

A smattering of light is on my face,
soft silky grief drips on sleep now.

Crafting on the Sodden Cobble

I have been repurposed to live
for someone else,
never knowing real things.
my heart is in the music library,
my eyes are fading starlight,
my hands craft on the sodden cobble.
My voice chokes in the swamp, I don’t know
when the moon will cross the townhall,
spiders search the fissures on the rock wall,
memories are re-pieced into dark shadows,
in its infinite possible shapes
where beauty is grief and despair.

Everything is falling up.
This place is heard, smelled, hated, loved.

Influx

The evening lowers its weary bones.

The light turns the wall into a series of reflections.
memory, longing, you cry out loud.

The barely audible clock goes to sleep.
you try to say something
if only there is a fire place,
you may want to burn in that fire.

Words form a great circle between moments,
there is a constant flux, it moves
it changes, it reverses itself, covers all distances.

Outside, the wind blows through bamboo grove,
You dream of Sagano forest and its music,
swaying bamboo carries the sound,
slowly healing mind,

Shadows lean their heads
where the soil sinks soft in the flower pot,
into the frame between the windows,

memory becomes monsoon
where it wears water,
pursuing life’s tenuous bubble,

I watch you breathe in the endorphin light.