Two Poems

by Ankur Betageri (June 2018)

View from Heidelberg Castle, Wilhelm Trübner, 1873

Adoration of an Eikon
 

If his love has become a torment

it’s ’cause he lacks faith in the illumination of the face

and, he wavers, the light persuading him to trust

while he distrusts—

Out of the photograph her eyes seem to peer

through the mask of his face, at who he is.

She had only looked at the camera-eye

but that look, whose eyes did it seek?

It meets his, and though neither knows the other

the taut muscle of her neck tightens his.

Spring trees blossom and swell his mind’s streets

he walks along their edge nervous in the feet.

By not knowing her he can be her better

look out of her eyes—into a mirror.

Moth-like he hovers over the flame of her face

an icon whose adoration has made her his image.

Notre Dame au Soleil, Albert Marquet, 1904

 

A Deep Calm as of Another Time . . .[1]

 

In the shaded space between trees and buildings

on the road stretched between parked cars

in the lassitude of leaves and cawing of crows

in my shadow cast by morning sun on a faraway window

in the shawl draped on a woman walking

in the cheep-cheep & twittering & cries of birds

in the flapping of eagle-wings, in the hovering of a buzzing bee

in the casual sniffing and ambling of a dog

in the dispersal over roofs of grey pigeons

in the stillness of nameless berries hanging serenely in light

there is a deep calm as of another time

lost in my memory, in the flavour of other mornings,

there is the sensation of another eye kissed by this air

a strange moment it is lobbed into the day

that evokes the childhood memory of timelessness.

 

[1] The original Kantian title of this poem is: A Moment of Deep Calm Evokes a Memory That Has Become an Idea of Reason.

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Ankur Betageri is a poet, short fiction writer and visual artist based in New Delhi. He is the author of The Bliss and Madness of Being Human (poetry, 2013) and Bhog and Other Stories (short fiction, 2010). He teaches English at Bharati College, University of Delhi. His poetry has appeared in Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Mascara Literary Review and London Review of Books.

More by Ankur Betageri.

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