Deepa Agarwal

Beneath the mask
my face melts
...

A forest of narcissus
she said
grew behind my house.
...

You were not unaware
of the efficacy of the grand gesture.
The triumphant entry,
a torrent of palms swirling in the air.
...

I cannot be laid to rest
like Rilke
in the earth I have chosen
for my own burial.
...

Another place of the skull
Another Golgotha
Clean neat bleached to the bare
necessities of existence
...

Summer means listless days
struggling to find breath
in the indolent rhythm of card games.
Shuffling, dealing,
...

In the tranquil square of memory
I play hopscotch
...

Naively, poetically
so many things can be said.
Unheard of things. Non existent
tongues emerge, find voice. Words
...

Cunningly,
colours will sneak past the corner of your eye
and stun it into stillness. Arch into hopeful rainbows
gleam like a palette of gems
...

Hope there always is—always should be
even
when a ship is being smashed
against the rocks. There is hope.
...

The mirror in which I sought myself once
sought me in turn, when spurned,
its emptiness grew too vast for it to face.
Emptiness, that black hole into which we must fall
...

Once there was a princess who wept pearls,
and once there was a princess
who laughed flowers. Both died, I heard.
One of weeping
...

Tracing yellow lines
On broad banyan leaves
Winding the fragile thread
Round and round...
...

I would have liked to live forever within
the opaque glass walls of your love. Seeing the world
through misty eyes. The sun's heat
softly tempered to my back. The rain,
...

Rain in childhood
falls without explanation
simply pouring out of the sky
we do not dance in it (like my children will one day)
...