Nurturing a Wish for Things, Fondly

by Bibhu Padhi (October 2015)

This time there are no excuses

for not being what you promised to be.

 

All the wrongs committed in the name of

what we always wanted, have found their excuses:

 

the mind’s naïve assertions despite

the body’s inaccurate behaviour,

 

the heart’s locating its own luminous reason

for what you did in the dark repeatedly,

 

following your own hand’s involuntary moving towards

the magnetic appeal of what lay exposed,

 

to wild possibilities of victory and defeat,

win and loss, a limp terminal of sorts.

 

There is nothing more to be done

or achieve, or, if there is, it is

 

only to accumulate additional

shades and names to a list of memories,

 

your brittle sleep. This is the time

to rebuild ruined homes, repossess

 

an honest, faultless wish, insistently

reminding yourself of how there comes a time

 

when even a precious wish, somehow

fondly remembered through

 

all acts of violence and gossip,

by the world’s habitual treachery

 

can always shift into

a passion, get lost irretrievably.

 

 

___________________________

 

Bibhu Padhi’s tenth book of poems, Midnight Diary, has just been published. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, India.

 

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