“Never corner your enemy – he will fight back.
Always give him a chance to run, so you can slash his back open.”
They always came with the setting sun,
With the winds filling their turbaned masks,
Howling the herald of a troubled night,
For the travellers never meant good news.
“Is it true that you can steal portraits from nature as well?”
She did not immediately acknowledge the question, but continued to stare intently at the raindrops breaking off the window sill. I had the unsettling feeling that she could see something that I was clearly missing. I followed her gaze, resting my eyes on the very edge of the window. The rain was breaking into a hundred different miniscule rubies and sapphires where it touched the concrete, shining in the light borrowed from the low flame of the hurricane lamp. Indeed, there seemed to be a fatalistic beauty in it all, with just a sheen of hope to delude the unsuspecting daydreamer.
Untruth, once said, is a burden:
On my mind that must keep track
Lest it should lose itself wandering
In the wilderness of imagination;
On my heart that must beat louder
To drown the cry of conscience
Till it chooses to speak no more;
On my eyes that must keep open
Against the weight of shame
That pulls them to the ground;
And on my truth that had to be hidden
Because it was not good enough.
Resign herself is what she thinks of it.
Pride is what she needs.
She bows her head and hides her face,
Hoping the darkness of her hair is cover enough.
She does not know that when those eyes open
And stare directly into the eyes of mortals,
It is no less beautiful than a sunrise
For they are too brilliant to look directly into.
And poets, unlike painters, can only draw
Inspiration from nature.
They lack the vision of originality.
And so they have to reduce a picture
To a metaphor, an imperfect parallel. A glimpse.
I am incapable of painting better than this.
“Can I have a look at your work?”
For a long time now, I have dreaded that question. For me, my writing is private. It is not meant for those who do not know the context and so I choose very carefully who sees my words. And yet, if you know me well, you would know that I have tried in the past to overcome this dread, that this page that you see today is not my first blog. I have, in the past, started and abandoned three of them. Each of these blogs has a story of its own and each has quite an independent share of my writings on it. I will not migrate my work from there, though. They belong there, crystallised in the amber of time. But I will tell their stories here. Continue reading
