What if … Nishigandha, Telugu, Indian
Silly! These evenings are always like that…
They gently walk through the open windows
And over the frail fagged countenances.
A dewy flower flutters, swings and drops
Into the valley like a streak of light.
And a long reticent journey begins…
What if those nights hadn’t cared to visit
Brushing aside the catch of soft dusky sunshines?
What if they didn’t play time and again
Like the haunting lyrics of the favorite song
The supposedly forgotten uninhibited laughters
And the concerns under the daily routine?!
Over the listlessly severing minute sands
The iterating I’s spraying from me
Amuse fancifully under the moonlight.
When will it dawn that the sought after was lost forever?!
How many times ever you entreat, “Oh! Not now…”
The rain comes down…
With the counting of differences, and
Squaring out of obstinacies
The soul gets soiled within.
Why these nights dawn, I wonder!
Neither can they quench the thirst of this fictile bowl
Nor can they conceal it deftly.
Is it a sense of vacuity, or immutability?
Before the hands, stretched out for long into the darkness
In hope of an answer descending like a crescent,
Could be folded and withdrawn fully
The whiff amidst the leaves
And the birds in their nests
And the breaking of the seed in the soil
All steadily cease.
As the childhood story
Slowly unwinds as I slip into sleep
Suddenly, mother flashes in memory
And with her, her fever.
Does the sudden shuddering fear know
Why these nights come at all?
And having come once, why repeat over and over?
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Nishigandha
Telugu, Indian
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Nishigandha
Kiran Yalamanchi, more popular by her pen name Nishigandha, was born and brought up in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. She is an engineer by profession and is currently living in USA. In her own words: “Poetry is my invisible friend stands right next to me and holds my hand in every emotional stage! I don’t publish a lot but I do write more often.. almost everyday.”
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