of Love and Poetry

I spent my Saturday in leisure and love. I read some old poetry while munching on biscuits with tea during early afternoon. It felt quite English, frankly. And really good. Only that I was sitting in my room beside the window and not on some freshly mowed green lawn basking under the sun. Even if I did have the imagination then, my mother's incessant calls would have brought me back to my apartment environs anyway. So I was indulging myself completely today; it is rare that I find my weekends without activities to do and I was determined to make the most of it. 

My tryst with poetry began during my engineering first year. But it has been an on-and-off relationship since I started working. But I definitely like to enjoy large doses of poetry all at once. It fills me up with emotions galore, and I feel quite alive. 

I was reading some of Vikram Seth's works today and there are two poems that I felt I should share with you all. They are crisply written and capture a lot in just a few words.

First one:

Sit

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.

You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead.

No need for wits; just talk vacuities, and I'll

Reciprocate in kind or laugh at you instead.

The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.

This twenty minutes' rendevous will make my day:

To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,

Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

Second:

Time Zones
I willed my love to dream of me last night, that we might lie
at peace, if not beneath a single sheet, under one sky.
I dreamed of her but she could not alas humour my will;
it stuck me suddenly that where she was was daylight still.

The second poem has a small story behind it. But the story is for some other post. As for now, I will put up a few lines that a dear friend thought as an appropriate response to the above lines:


We did dwell under the same sky; and while I dreamt with closed eyes,
She thought of me; in the cubicle, the mall and the kitchen, I surmise.