Two Poems

by Ankur Betageri (August 2018)

Trespass, Helen Frankenthaler, 1974

 

 

 

An End to Dreaming

 

I wish I could live happily

under the trees

collect alms

from loving householders

and move from

public park to public park

 

I wish I could sleep

sannyasi-like on a park bench

without police waking me up with a stick.

I wish I could gaze at the constellations

at midnight without the dogs barking:

thief! thief!

 

I wish I could live

as if there was no state regulation

no traffic, pollution, heat and disease.

I wish detachment and god-love

could free me completely

make me immune to cruelty and injustice

and the work-regime of the world.

 

I wish my enlightenment

could end poverty and hunger

rid the world of slavery and child abuse.

I wish my under-tree teaching sessions

could clear a farmer’s debt or stop

the killing of tribals by anti-naxal troops.

 

I wish punya was bank balance

and hoarding enough

opened the doors to heaven

I wish the answer to world’s suffering

was to call the world false

and ask to be released from it.

 

I wish moksha was more than just death

that it wasn’t: ending life utterly and making death eternal

I wish I could believe what the books say the ‘Learned’ knew

and that this poem wasn’t a refutation. 

 

 

 

 

Paperweight

 

Like

from its folded

depths

the sea

exhales

and ripples

through

a crinkly

sail

 

from the depth

of its wavy

folds

her skirt

blows

a breeze

over my

fevered

eyelids

 

but when

from beneath

the skirt

her knees

press against

the cardboard wall

of my curt

replies

 

paper-thin

codes

of propriety

loom over us

like a fortress.

 

 

________________________

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 New English Review, Mascara Literary Review and London Review of Books.

NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast