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Creation and Criticism

ISSN: 2455-9687  

(A Quarterly International Peer-reviewed Refereed e-Journal

Devoted to English Language and Literature)

Vol.03, Joint Issue 08 & 09 : Jan-April 2018

Five Poems of Durlabh Singh


Durlabh Singh is a poet and artist currently living in London, England. He was born In Nairobi, Kenya of Indian parentage. He has lived in London for over 40 years. He is an accomplished poet having published in over 300 publications worldwide. He has written and illustrated several books including his critically acclaimed poetry collection Chrome Red, Spaces of Heart, Natural Tones and Invisible Lore, a fascinating collection of short stories Kama Sutra of Love and his latest novel In The Days of Love. He is an estabilished artist and his art has been exhibited and is housed in private and public collections all over the world including India, Kenya, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Paris, France and New York, New York.


 

1. Deserts

 

Will the deserts now bloom

In the tear shaped waters shed by dawn

Where long reached shadows will graze

The silted veins of some muted storm.

 

Let the moths eat the vermin

At the heart of tarnished thorn

Let the forests retain their magic play

With thread woven from the ancient yarn.

 

Builder for the houses of heart

Just turned out to be a construct of fraud

Collapsed in emotions, hand held motions

Searching for the guidance in a jilted start.

 

2. Cannot Remember

 

I cannot remember my name

As there is no remembrance

On my finger tips

No remembrance in my bones

No remembrance in skeleton

And my skull speaks

Of anguished living fears

Compounded by arduous

Callousness of the fate.

 

I have no name

Perhaps I was a companion

Of the wandering shadows

Living in docile lands

Outside the gates of paradise.

 

Squeezed in hand

To find tooth of lemon

And drink waters

Drained of the rivers saline

To quench thirsts born of fevers.

 

To compensate for breaths

Starved of the living

I will pay dividends

By the levies on winds

And when the voices

From alien lands arrive

I will not agree to stand thither

Because I cannot recall my name

On tapes of some measured message.

 

Tonight I may

Under the star studded heavens

In high reverberations of mind

Find some new grounds

Of some whispered tonalities

To recall past remembered sound.

To recall my name.


3. Bitter Lemon

 

I want to cut my teeth

On the rind of a bitter lemon

And feel the veins of wintry night

Caught in eddies on the frozen lips.

 

To follow the paths of the sea

Or to the creatures of sultry nights

Places where agonies kept vigils

In tear stained cheeks after saline.

 

In the love I embraced

Within my arms some pallid form

But strident heart betrayed its strain

Catching breaths for some ancient storm.

 

Graces of dead leaves in splits

Half remembered tales of ancient bliss

Some strivings for hankerings of heart

Looking for solace in a venomed start.


4. Dimensions

 

To think of you

Is not to think of you

Tonight.

 

A single point diverges

Into dimensions of horizon

Subterranean reasons within

Causing rippled symptoms.

 

Singular diversions

Of narcissus nihilty

A muted presence

Perhaps will be sufficient

For directing love into some clarity.

 

A life perhaps you loose

Or control over its luminosity

An entry into cessation

A heart into intellectual sterility.

 

A few returned to the sea

To pick rock or the rose

Under scorpioned rough shades

Some deadly tumults in remorse.

 

5. Grow Fingers

 

And I grow fingers and thumbs to write more

The verses that do not follow straight lines

But zigzagging under the open skies

In chromed yellow sunlight

In canopy of the trees

Of the emerald green.

 

Deserts there are, heat exhausted creatures

Which demand to know the arrival of dawn

Within the hot sandy dunes loneliness resides

Seized in sounds of silences the wind sighing.

 

Winters I have seen , in interiors of people

Where motions are frozen in frigid bonds

And down pours from dark clouds echoes

The deaths of the moths on the frozen ponds.

 

Today I speak from depths of the being

From slits in roofs, from broken charades

From blood soaked minds under the bullets metallic

Or women singing their songs in mud soaked paddies.

 

Run with syrup on my parched lips

Or disappear in the immensity of the seas

Rain forested creatures wormed of nights

In wakeful of the myths for mutterings in dawn.

 


 

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