MOODS

coming out of the frame, 
in evening without a sun, unflinchingly, 
he said, he was talking to his father 
daily, in his mind, who was in grave, 
(when he was on ventilator) 
about a lesson of deception, about the things 
evolved in endogamy, 

cherubic, it seems, but there was water on the moon too, 
in solitude, on gravel, under the rocks; 
he kept on washing his hands for hours, 
to remove the dirt and stigma, gathered on shaking 
the lamps around the dark and then he started 
collecting the flowers from the embroidery 
of clouds 

do not cry in the afternoon 


Satish Verma