Thathana

I am at a temple; one that speaks
More than it should.
It holds within its grounds
A pond. What is a pond?
The accumulation of water?
Is it a temple too?
One that speaks as it should?
The rain has lightly fallen here today.
The rain also speaks.
It speaks faintly;
And what it says makes a wide
But fleeting impression
Dappling the pond,
Accumulating here and there.

Youth

Not one truth,
But a greater truth
To resolve our differences,
Bring cadence.

I multiply
What cannot be multiplied,
A fractional endeavor,
The last of youth’s levers –

Singer and song and tempest
Whole
Are practically all but one
Except the revelry
Of age.

Vespers

I don’t wait for that light to fail,
It has already failed the purest

Filter of mind, and is nailed

Down here as a pretext for disbelief.

The sun is an engine that runs

On stilts of light, a stolid effluence

Of the milk of human joy;

Its northern unconditionality bringing dismay.

In the shadow of its altered lights

Which are nothing but a bothered absence

There’s a drama, curtailing night;

A world’s continual sequence.

Pray then for the seeds that hover

In the relinquishing air

Before the ground utterly opens

Or the butterfly’s hyphen

Dash at life succumbs to a cold

And harmless undoing.