Pain

 

A heart that has not known sorrow

Is like a well-manicured courtyard,

Paved with beautiful tiles,

And never littered with falling leaves

After a stormy summer day;

 

But a heart familiar to loss

Will let grief seep into the wounds

Like a peepal seed finds its way

Through the cracks and crevices

Of a house that has known better days;

 

With time, when the roots gather strength,

When April comes with her babbling ways,

The peepal shall resound

With the cackle of singing birds;

 

Pain is quite a small price to pay

To have a song play in your heart

In a green bower meant only for you.

 

Diptesh Ghosh

 

 

Letters

 

Your letter beats in my pocket, rich with your scent.

It came in wrinkled, with dog-eared corners, crumpled.

 

I like to believe it came thus

Because you read and then re-read what you first wrote,

Because you clasped it tight, still not sure what was right,

Because neatness was the last thing that you had sought,

Because it really mattered, this letter:

Because love is expressed with unsteady fingers;

 

I like to think so.

You may have noticed that all my small notes to you

Seem to have been written as if I had

The clumsiest, most nervous fingers that ever

Put words to paper in this whole wide world.

 

Diptesh Ghosh