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'.  

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]