He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the ****
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.

I can hear the whispers
That echo from the
Crevices of your broken heart
And I hope you hear mine too.

I can see you're crippled
From the bludgeon of treachery
So am I
Only my crippledness engenders from
The emptiness of my soul
That has relinquished its everything
To someone who didn't return it.

I can sense your breath
That still reeks
With the smell of the abyss you've seen
But can you discern
The wrinkles on my skin too
Which conceal the tales of the depths
That I also had drowned in once.

I can decipher the fear
That emanates from the tremble in your touch
Somehow I can overhear the cacophony of your thoughts
That run wild inside your mind,
And I can also discern the silence
That lingers on your lips.
But do you see the swellings
Beneath my eyes
Which bulge from the accumulation of unpoured tears.

No need to vocalise your grief
Or substantiate your pain.
For I too have had the misfortune
To know these maligns
And I know how much they can deprive us
Of happiness and joy.

When we stumbled into each other
On the same path
That we both were trudging
In this forest of lost souls.
It seemed like I finally
Felt the warmth of the fire
When your eyes clashed with mine.

It seemed like a tempest
Had pierced
The layers of loneliness and desolation
That were bedaubed over my skin
With time.

I wondered at the sorcery of your smile
That occupies such a little space
On your countenance
But still outshines the elegance of the moon.

Let's be the hands that eternally hold each other
Let's be the legs that walk all the miles together
Let yourself be the shelter of a boat
And let me be the lighthouse that exudes a ray of hope.

Let's adjoin our firmaments that is filled with myriad of stars,
Let's sit beneath it and deduce constellations out of our erratic thoughts.
Let's help each other in gathering the pieces of our shattered hearts
Let's build a heart filled with love and care and begin from the start.

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