Against Sainte-Beuve

"The beautiful things we shall write if we have talent are inside us, indistinct, like the memory of a melody which delights us though we are unable to recapture its outline. Those who are obsessed by this blurred memory of truths they have never known are the men who are gifted ... Talent is like a sort of memory which will enable them finally to bring this indistinct music closer to them, to hear it clearly, to note it down ..." 

                                                                                                                   -Proust

The First Step

I write because I cannot help it. Writing and sculpting are similar. They both begin with nothing- a block of stone or a nebulous mind and both work to chisel a precise image out of formlessness. The human mind and its innumerable shades can never be unraveled through words. But like the troubled lake that apprehends an imperfect moon, words can stumble over visions. Graffiti is a platform to chronicle my writing endeavors and to keep my lazy, petulant mind from falling into wordless slumber. Hopefully there is more activity on this front in the days to come!

So this is how it is

The summer haze diffuses through the window,

The lonely cock crows noon again,

I grope for my glasses, put them on and find

Another photochromatic day-

So this is how it is.

You're sitting on a cloud, you say you're unmoored,

I am on the ground while you evaporate.

From where I stand, if you were rock

And I was paper, you'd cut through me for air.

You scuttled my paperboat with your philosophy,

It floated for a while and sank,

But these still waters run rather deep

And the journey to the bottom was real.

So this is how it is.

The last thing I remember-

I had a map and no destination,

The colourful houses, trees and the tar

Looked like the ones I had left behind

Each street corner, face and bougainvillea

Whizzed by stroboscopically

That's when I realised- the new was more of old

And the old was, well, just older.

So this is how it is.

"B"

What I Will

The power of performance poetry seems to have untapped potential. So amazing!

Hands

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,

Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

Where thirsting longing eyes

Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

Speak low, lean low

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Christina Georgina Rossetti