Ah! Friendship Poem by Pratyush Mishra

Those smells of familiarity so sweet
Flipping through pages of verse by Gevorg Emin
Dog-eared pages; much thumbed pages
All the while, asking and thinking
What if Vano and Khachik had really met,
Watched Chapayev…what would that have been?
Ah! Friendship…in all respects, I bet!
Like Holmes and Watson…standing tall as ancient pyramids
Facing together crimes’ gurgling rapids!
As good Florey and Chain
Who set out to commercialize fungal penicillin,
To relieve many a pain
As wharf-rats aboard many ships
Marauding, plundering and snatching gold for keeps
With Black Bart Roberts on Spanish Main
Great things would’ve happened
Had they both met-Vano and Khachik
Clothes thread-bare thin yet friends thick
On cold evenings… “Happy drinkin’…”
Ah! That would have been friendship for sure
On those dog-eared pages of verse by Emin.

Ah! Friendship…That rhyme we sang
Of old ship, gold ship yet none like FRIENDSHIP
In school breaks sharing Tiffin
Much before my tryst with Emin!
Riding bicycles in pouring rain
Sharing just one rainwear under sky leaky, opened
Upper half on one fellow; lower on another
Both thoroughly drenched to skin
That happened much before my tryst with Emin!



When girls would box and boys would cry
Only to impress our teacher we would all try
Those days are gone…like logs on a river drifting by
Very unhappily wished Goodbye…Goodbye!


But again it’s queer, where…when…why
Life offers us another try
At friendship?
Ah! Friendship
With-
-The blind toothless beggar and his basket
Smiling at four every noon at Capital Market

-That woman slim and dusky; face filled with pride
Displaying seasonal fruits by road’s side

-The limping priest-mumbling chants and ire
Mediating between Destiny and Desire

-That labourer breaking stones
That shine in the Noon’s heat as would a million suns
Urchins cackling at the broken pipe, sucking summer’s fun

-The open blue sky, that sets my spirit free to fly

The red-brown earth; whispering a reminder
“We all belong in the Hearth”

-That small smiling girl carrying a smaller brother
Wiping off his nose like a mother

-That dark room and ink-sooted desk;
Stacked books; a bespectacled bibliophile lost
In some twisted Kafkaesque mental maze.

-The girl Nazia with big kohl-lined eyes
Pure poetry living in disguise!

And finally with this pen, kissing this paper
The poet and his loneliness-Friends Forever!

Thursday May 13,2010