I Can Be Your Poem

Image: Isabel Steudel

I can be your poem,  

read in repose,  

under a sky full of starlight,  

between my desire and yours.

.

You can find a staircase in me  

 or a meadow to get lost,  

find the meaning of thunder  

as you question the law of loss.    

.

In the light which we share,  

in the times when our smiles touched, 

 there was always the pain  

which only tenderness knows.    

. 

Maybe, these were mere words,  

written with thoughts of dew,  

but who are we to cry on fate,  

when it brings rain to us when we seek.   

. 

So love, don't read me with tears,  

let the riversides lie locked,  

for every bridge to the sunset  

is just a way to us.  

So much of love is all about being in the moment - or losing love's lifeblood forever. 

This blessed journey of ours, is too short, too full of distractions, too full of griefs, for us to fully comprehend its sublime essence as it passes by. We need to stay in its awareness, to realize how precious  its moments are. 

The length, paradoxically, is of little consequence. A lifetime together might have just a few memorable moments, but just a few moments might have a whole lifetime embedded in them. 

That's the joy, pain, and gorgeousness of this unhealed scar called love...

This poem is very dear to me. It’s the last poem in my first book “Of Love and Other Abandonments” But there’s a cute story attached to it.

I had gone on a Times Passion Trail, where we’d met and intimately interacted with doyens like Swanand Kirkire, Amish Tripathi, Bachi Karkaria, film director Vinay Shukla, Shaili Chopra and, above all - Javed Akhtar, with whom we had a particularly long session. AND I recited this very poem to him. And he was completely overwhelmed.

He came up to me after the session, and said “Poet, shake my hand!”

To be called a poet by THE POET of our times was a compliment I have never forgotten!

(Also, I don’t think I have washed my right hand since then!!)

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Hear the poem!

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