Vikram Seth Poems

What can I say to you? How can I retract
All that that fool my voice has spoken -
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
The protocols of friendship broken?
...

I will be easy company; the blur
Of what I longed for once will fade to space.
...

Last night your faded memory came to me
As in the wilderness spring comes quietly,
As, slowly, in the desert moves thew breeze,
As to a sick man, without cause, comes peace
...

Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling
Through the unsettled stillness of the night
He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling
That dawn has come and gone and brought no light.
...

Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
...

I smiled at you because I thought that you
Were someone else; you smiled back;
...

Across these miles I wish you well.
May nothing haunt your heart but sleep.
May you not sense what I don't tell.
May you not dream, or doubt, or weep.
...

How rarely all these few years, as work keeps us aloof,
Or fares, or one thing or another,
...

You don't love me at all? O God. O Shit.
You still 'respect me.' Thanks. I value it
About as much as one who's asked to use
A second hat when he's in need of shoes.
...