by Gopikrishnan Kottoor
It was before the great blasts of 11/7.
The monsoons had not carried away the woods then.
The couple in love had not yet committed suicide.
It was December, and the paper looked strange,
as I pulled it out from my drawer, curious
what news the earth had held then and was stuck,
the way things pass us by and we enter future days,
taking the sad past for granted. Some one had turned out
to be the worlds billionaire, and a girl’s lover
by the fish clove had opened the door for him
to murder her husband, and together they buried him,
alive and sleeping and had sex later among the newly
laid out
tiles. The weather was calm. It did not look
as though there would be a Tsunami
for a thousand years. A child kissed his dead father,
a soldier killed in action, and in the turning pages
Time stood, a frozen priest
to the erring winds of lust’s blind confessions.
In the obituary God did his guest role of thief from heaven
parting tears of the living,
in the paper that gathered the dust of two years,
looking for its autumn, turning in my hands to a ripe maple
leaf.
- Share this Poem:
ABOUT THE POET ~
Born (1956), Trivandrum, Kerala, India., Winner, All India Poetry Prizes, Poetry Society, India-British Council Awards (96, 97, 98), and other leading poetry prizes. Poetry published in Ariel (Canada), Orbis (UK), Nth Position (UK), Bluefifth Review (UK), Toronto Review (Canada), The Illustrated Weekly of India, Kavya Bharati (India), Fulcrum (USA), Verse, Seattle, (USA), Indian Literature, Arabesque Review, Plaza (Japan), Chandrabhaga (India), and others. Founder editor, Poetry Chain. Participant, MFA, Texas state University, (2000) Poet in Residence, Augsburg University, Germany (2004). Important works : Poetry : Father, Wake Us In Passing, (German Translation, Wolfgang Heyder) A Buchenwald Diary, Mother Sonata, Victoria Terminus, Poems Selected and New (2010). The Coloured Yolk of Love (2012). Drama: Fire In The Soul The Mask of Death. Novel : A Bridge Over Karma (Novel). Poetry included in The Bloodaxe book of Contemporary Indian Poetry In English, The Golden Jubilee Anthology of Post Independence Indian poetry In English, and Poetry Society, India anthologies.
Last updated June 18, 2012