Category: My Poetry

On a day quite far from today

There are five stanzas here, three lines each. 8, 12 and 4 syllables respectively. I used this style to create a feeling of inclompleteness, a feeling of something-more-to-do, of promises left to redeem (Please tell me if I failed desperately). And the rhyme is like this: the first two lines of each stanza end in a rhyme, and the last lines of all stanzas end rhyming “you”. Phew.

* * *

The play is done, the curtains close;
The time has come for us to walk away with those
Memories few.

The heart knows not how to forget;
You’ll remain my guiding star as we ourselves set
Onto paths new.

An enduring strength in all pains,
A soothing answer to all questions, there remains
A promise due:

On a day quite far from today,
Across a million miles, your breath in mine shall lay,
If love be true;

Having reached the stars of our prime,
Quite far from the rumblings of the matchbox called Time,
I shall be you.

KISHORE KUMAR

Voices in the Night

A poem I wrote over four years ago on a scrap of paper in the middle of a winter night. Free verse.

* * *

Walking through the ancient woods
I heard the minstrels sing
Songs of old; not of war glory,
But of little men and their little deeds.

The touching tales moved my soul,
Seeping through the layers of old
Draped around me in infamy;
Tales of wonder and joy, cherished sorrow.

In the silence of the woods
Rang the odes of praise
Of men who lived
In forgotten eras of the pat beyond.

On the fallen autumn leaves
Did I read the epic tales
Written by men of long ago
On the leaves of human history.

That they marvelled at the stars
And once reached for them, I heard;
And here the minstrels stopped
And the silence took over

In that silence did I hear
The voices of men long dead
Echoing through my mind
Louder than could my mind perceive

Thus did the woods teach me
The designs of the human soul
Residing in me for eternity
And told me tales to hold me forever.

KISHORE KUMAR

Listen, My Love

In the calm of the night, under the stars of the sky,
I feel your breath and its warmth,
Hear your heart pulsating with life
Across the miles that lie between us

Do you hear me, my fair darling,
Do you hear my song,
As I whisper into the night
Little things I would you hear

Remember the days of long ago
When we lay together, flying in your dreams,
Little children in the cradle of time
When love bonded us together forever?

Remember that long ago
When we met Life as it crossed our path
And made a mutual promise
Of love and truth

I see the questions in your eyes
And the doubts in your heart
I feel the fears that storm your mind
And take them all up, pour l’amour de l’amour

Tell me, my white daisy, tell me yes
Do you feel me in you, do you hear me speak
The truth with all fervour:
I am yours forever

KISHORE KUMAR

Forbidden Love

Another sad love poem. I’d give this more points than to my previous ones. There are ten syllables to a line, rhyme scheme is a b a b.

* * *

Watching the dancing flame consume away
A browning piece of paper once cherished,
I could see my beauteous castles of clay
That Fate hurriedly trampled underfoot.

I let the pain sink into my sinew,
Let the pictures play upon my heart free
And let tears out that were unshed and due,
For a love that was, but never could be.

Of unkept promises and dreams unmet,
I lament, of paths I must tread alone;
But from within my heart I hear it said,
“Don’t try to share the pain that is your own.”

That sweetest of loves is love unfulfilled
I know; hence this pain is for me to take.
I let them vanish, the mansions I built,
And I’m ready for another heartbreak.

KISHORE KUMAR

When once the Nightqueen bloomed

Winter has come again
And brought with it its chill
And a whiff of your scent.

Cold evenings on a country road,
The nightqueen’s fragrance in our garden
And the moonlight streaming in though the window:
Distant memories stirred by the wind

Of shared umbrellas in the monsoon,
Autumn leaves falling to the ground
And the relished feel of wool
In a warm country’s winter.

Every road leads me to you
And the sweet pain in which we revelled;
But greater pain it is to know
That these memories are all I have

KISHORE KUMAR

Ode to the Moon

I wrote this poem a little after reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It is a quasi-mystical argument against the central argument of the Rubaiyat. In this, I try and speak about the splendour and vanity of human life. This poem is in quatrains, in the style of Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat. Complete with iambic pentameter and a a b a rhyme.

This first part deals with war.

Look down to us, O celestial Angel
From your high seat in heaven where you dwell,
You witness our lives pass under the clouds
Touching, as we pass by, heaven and hell

Imprinted forever on your memory
Is our spent shame-faced and blood-drenched history
For you have seen us tremble, rise and fall;
Play in the cruel hands of fate, sans pity!

With passion and zeal we’ve traversed our time,
And heard for generations the same bells chime:
The gongs of war and the bells of a church
Sound from the same lands of piety and crime

With deep fervour we have loved and betrayed
And with crude sweet hunger our kin have slayed
Alas for human soul that fate has conned:
That very soul that for mercy has prayed

In blood and tears is man’s great epic soaked
In emotions unknown is man’s soul cloaked;
And you have seen, in the cold of the night,
Where roamed man for the key to the door locked

Far and wide have we strayed on our journey
And left the shown path in vain blasphemy;
In haste we run, O so far from Eden,
’til Heaven laments, for Man’s Vanity

You watch, in the ceaseless divine Drama,
Actors come and go, play with charisma;
Of great Cosmic Order does your tale speak,
But nothing, perhaps, like human trauma

Whatever story that history speaks of
Whatever tale that makes us weep or laugh,
Reveals the mystery of human nature
Which we, for our frailty, dare not speak of

No blood was shed in vain, no tears wasted
For every lost drop was a victory tasted:
Not at battle but at a greater ground
Called wisdom from the follies of the rested

Under your serene vision have we passed
Striving as we might, for Wisdom to last
Yet that immensity does man elude,
That to which we would submit, and thus, last

Any disgrace that we may hope to find
Is a vain war against the cords that bind
The Universe in its Cosmic Order
And hence is perfectly moulded mankind

To those absolute laws that govern thy motion
And those that permeate the whole of creation,
– Do we pay obeisance
For that moment of Infinite Justice we wait
To feel the love of our Lord beyond the Great Gate
– Who is all, above all.

KISHORE KUMAR

For Dissolved Dreams

In fervour deep, and for love, hunger deep
I engraved a passionate poem on the sands of time;
While on the shore, the ocean raged and ravaged
And in a moment of fury, erased my lines written in blood

Then I realised, way too late, that I had written my lines on borrowed territtory

Kishore Kumar