Wednesday 20 February 2008

By Elizabeth Lake by Ashok Niyogi

I weep profusely
into the cockeyed sofa

this blue sky
is a roof without relief
lilies
dance on raw red mince

this is strip-tease on the trapeze
these grapes I have forbidden myself
for liberty’s sake
for meditation on very young
suburban third-world love
so arranged
that comets
herald the rising sun
in eccentric orbits around a setting earth

for this loss
I shamelessly weep
for these bloodstains
on my snow covered chimney sweep
for crows that are not jackdaws
for cardboard jousting-spears
and tiny electric cars
for bedraggled eagles
at last shorn
of my eagle’s pride

of wing sweep shifts
that geese make
to fly into afternoon wind
before they land
for this relearning of alphabets

abandoned on arthritic sand


Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

4 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

Ashok Niyogi is an Economics graduate from Presidency
College, Calcutta, India. He made a career as an
International Trader and has lived and worked in the
Soviet Union, Europe and South East Asia in the ‘80s
and ‘90s. At 52, he has been retired for some years
and has been cashew farming, writing and traveling. He
divides time between California, where his daughters
live, Delhi, Goa on the Arabian sea, and the Indian
Himalayas. He has published a book of poems,
TENTATIVELY, [ISBN : 0-595-33935-2] and has been
extensively published in print and on-line magazines
and in Chapbook form in the USA, UK, Australia, New
Zealand, India, Turkey, Canada and Hong Kong.

Cynthia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cynthia said...

this is a beautifully desolate
poem, almost seductive in a
way, each word a clarified teardrop

Anonymous said...

Your poem was so intriguing. And any reader would have to think real hard to try to decipher the meaning. Also I loved some of the words you used like cockeyed sofa. It really stuck out.