You'd find the curtains lightly dancing
to the tune of that song,
to which we'd bashfully waltzed
the first time you had held me,
You'd smell the musk
Spreading its wings in the air,
That you once said, drove you
dizzy when you were around me,
You'd find poetry singing softly
Behind the veil of silence,
Reading aloud my verses of love,
Calligraphed on the bare canvas
Of my skin, in Urdu,
Curving and turning shyly,
For you to trace with gentle fingers,
Right to left, misra to misra,
Sher to sher,
The beher of each caress
Matching the stirring of my breaths,
Culminating at its pinnacle,
Into a ghazal, your ghazal,
That would, with demure grace,
Take form and calmly embrace,
The raging fire, the desperate uproar
Lashing at my parched, starved soul.

Maiden, maiden, maiden, a depilidate mobious minaret –
Holical, Eris begs an atlatl defection, the
Genuis-from-Mars technique – an erathicus lecanopteris.
Suffretex, past-perfection in pastel gloxinia,
Glowingly acidic and shiftingly glossidic, it’s cosmaltry mariala;
Ungual outmoded, holonym singing Aquilar rapax as demiurge.
Demos and Phobos weep, coruscating terrathos, killing riva.

Swell quickly, optic ophidia, lest the ira florena rise –
Rise, maiden, rise optic ophidia, ignore Irredelphine!
Strut the hematacolpa and pace-willow, but fail flow:
Deciduous telechir beckons, demanding autobogotic-hajra.
****-venom and picea hovea, eche verri naught echo –
Beta-decay and COBOL error, fandango with teeth
And sing praise for Eucladanic soignè solaris

Sprint quick, maiden-solidago gesparisè, to Misra pourum!
Majerns and hapax, death-knell aloud and encelia,
Enfloranè, haste! Enatic haste tichodrome, flee, anise!
Apios, harken: tryst-sans-thermobic sweeping of thresher-thrown,
Little-low else yet achroma, de-jubilance:
Fall fairly, ayah! So to be so, blanking systemic,
A thousand steps for one death.

In fields where whispers blend with sighs,
An intellect blooms beneath the wide skies,
Thoughts like shadows stretch long in the dusk,
While silence settles, heavy as husk.

The mind, a labyrinth of dreams unspun,
Wanders through memories of laughter and sun,
Yet every echo fades in the still air,
Leaving a heart with burdens to bear.

Among the rustle of leaves and the call of the night,
A brilliance trapped, longing for light,
In the beauty of solitude, wisdom entwines,
But the ache of connection forever defines.

DC Misra