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Thursday 19 March 2015

Flowers that kiss

Fade they will
even the most beautiful
of beautiful flowers --
but wilt is an eye-trick
in a tryst with time;
as long as gaze is older than gazed
as long as gaze is shaded by love
time conspires to conceal decay
re-name it in an alphabet
of changing hue and texture
as perfumes that grow sweeter
as they lose their baby freshness
and if all this failed
there’s the one redeemer:
a flower that lifts lips
and with one kiss
make poor the thousand kisses
of lips and gaze
received
and as for me
as recipient of poverty-gift  
I tell myself:
'you can die now'.  

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Faith above politics

In other times
contested terrain
lapped at
by tongues
that won’t hold,
food for rhetorician;
but Kachchativu
on Feast Day
recovers
and notions of divinity
lift
and free the faithful
from tongue and cheek:
blessed they are
for in that silencing
by prayer
land becomes land
and identities merge
and disappear.



[Inspired by the photography of Chandana Wijesinghe]