Remain With Me Poem by Madhup Mohta

With each snowfall and in each snowflake
As I bury memories annd try to invent hope
And seek to go beyond you and to return to my being
As threads of time and of thoughts and the tides
Arise, elapse and subside
And as you evoke me and I invoke you,
And the forms and the figures and the frgarences
Twist and turn and are translated into dreams
And as you swirl and swirl and swirl
To the notes of your own Nocturne
As you revisit your own rainbows and rhapsodies
And I subside slowly into shadows
I know that you want to hold me, hold me close, hold me back
Hold me to promises, and the waft and the weave of my words.
Hold me to promised passion in these the purple hours of the night.

Lust does not liberate love nor libation the spirit
And if this be so why
Must we go on to play these little games, why indeed
Of semantic seduction, of purposeless passion and of decietful dalliance
Of making and unmaking each other even as we seek ourselves in the each other
To discover ourselves.
And why must I see you not as I saw with my own eyes, and know that the truth of my touching you
Was the only truth when you touched me
And now that you are not here in my arms,
And in this moment that we look not at each other
But another and then another and yet another
You are only as true as I believe you to be true or untrue
And I believe you because I know you need to be believed.

And now that you are not here and I must return
To the sand that is sand when you are not here, and sea that remains sea when I do not see you
To the snow and the soil and the songs of the soil that sings to me when you do not sing
To the shadows that seranade me when you are not you and just the silhouette that shades me
To the dusk as dark, and to the wind that wails and whispers to me when you do not
To chrysanthemums and roses and dahlias that smile at me when you do not
To the dawn that dresses in colours that I choose and wears my moods and my sadness
To the sky and the stars that remember me so well and beckon me to beyond
I must return to rest in my own resolve, and fuel my own fumbling fire
And learn to laugh at my own reflection

For now that I know that you like time shall not stay
Just as the thoughts of you will not stay away
I will learn to unleave in my own autumn, and learn to render my own refrain
To myself, my own nothingness and consequent happiness of me being me
I shall rest content, for my joys each joy, of kissing you
Of holding you, and listening to your song and of walking with you in the rain
Was doubtlessly mine and even as I live with the pain of your distain
My love, shall remain my Love and it is forever yours that
I shall remain.