Minakhi Misra

Tag: poem

  • Prices of Purchased Affection

    I always went shopping with Munna.
    He knows where exactly to go:
    Where the clothes are just bad enough
    to skip the retail stores, but not so much
    that you can figure out that they are discards;
    Where the sweets are made in boiling ghee
    And not the oil that sticks to your fingers
    Thicker than the grease on your bicycle chain;
    Where the vegetables are just out of farms
    And the women from the countryside
    Do not know the trickeries of bargaining.

    (more…)

  • More than meets the lie

    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.

  • Sunrise

    You asked me today
    What I would write about you if I ever did.
    If I could paint you, you would know.
    I wish my words could paint your mind
    As the oil colours the canvas of cloth.
    I wish you could see what I see.
    I see a rising sun,
    Red with shyness,
    Trying to hold back her brightness,
    Embarrassed that the world can see her.
    I see this rising sun,
    Aware of her potential for brilliance
    When she ascends the young firmament of receding stars.
    But she is afraid of doing so. Not so early. Not now.
    She does not show that she likes
    When people appreciate her beauty.
    She enjoys it and becomes redder.
    And her redness, the innocence of her reservedness
    Spreads slowly across the wet canvas of the sky behind her;
    Clouds, dark and ominous, start getting silver linings.
    The things that were scary, are now in better light.
    She does this without knowing it.
    She feels that by lighting up the sky,
    She has somehow exposed others around her as well:
    Exposed to the eyes of people
    The eyes that criticise beauty as much as they condone it.
    But she also knows deep down that it is her destiny
    To rise one day to the zenith of this firmament
    And once there, resign herself to full brilliance.

    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.