Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 5, No 4: CLRI November 2018
Divya Gautam
Someday
It was always this way
Was always about the beauty
Hidden in the metaphors
Plain old words were exactly that
Plain, and old
Too simple for the glittery life
That the city claims is enviable.
There is a charm that hides
Behind small town stories
Spoken with the ease of understanding.
A smile is the only polish
That quaint words ever need
Hope, the only remedy
For sorrow stricken sentences
That peek out
From under a web of hesitation.
I want to tell those stories, someday
The ones that will never be written
But will die with the gazes that birthed them
Forgotten even after repetition
Like an adage that fell on deaf ears.
I want to live those lives, someday
The ones I have heard about
In books, older than my time
That still reek of knowledge
Near enough to grasp.
I want to see those places, someday
The ones that photographs don’t do justice
And stand on sheep filled hillsides
In lands where even the wind feels at home.
I want to be enough, someday
At least for myself
For what is this existence worth
If I cannot even calm this mind.
I want to know silence, someday
With all my words drained away
And all my paragraphs indented
With the peace that reigns
Over everything I am ever to become.
The Night Beckons
It was on a Sunday night
That the old lady darted down the street
Oblivious to traffic speeding
The white of her hair
Acting as a crucial stop sign
I wonder where this night will take her
I wonder where this night will take me
The cars honk out a symphony
Stealing peace from the dark
And ushering me homeward
I wonder what she has to live for
I wonder what I have to live for
Threads of fate are tethers
Pulling me back, pulling her back,
Shoving this existence into our souls
Like morsels forced into full hands
We will never have enough
It was always too much to handle
She is so delicate and frail, traipsing
Through the roads like a fairy lost
I wonder if she knows her path
I wonder if I know my path
And so, the lost ones look
Where the night beckons
And follow.