Makarand Paranjape Poems

After all, what's the worst thing that I can say
About you and our marriage? It is this:
I don't love you - cannot, the way I want to love
A woman; and that we are incompatible, by nature
...

After months of silence, there comes a day
When I feel I can turn anything I wish to say
Into poetry. And they talk so much
About the discipline of being a poet,
...

Dears RP, DT, UK, PP, ST, J, LK, SR, SC, AB, JR, NV, RR, II, LC, RU ....
I solicit the honour of your presence
In this collection of love poems.
...

Poverty is not so easy to attain.
It is not all misery-belly-pinching brats,
motherless, naked and dirty, let loose
among garbage heaps on squalid streets;
...

'It takes restraint to nurture
a relationship. Haste and greed
finish it quickly: you eat through
all the good parts and then
there's nothing left to relish.'
...

In the darkened room,
The improvised slide show was rigged up.
One of the walls, in pale pastel,
Served as the screen. At the other end,
...

To be a woman is to be silent and sure
To know, to be secure,
Not just about oneself but about the world,
About what's good and what's bad,
...

When her fright in crossing the road
made her cling to him,
he found himself praying
for the traffic to get worse.
...

Among other things,
to be as good as possible,
and never explain oneself afterwards;
...

She was a small person in a big house
stacked with objects d'art and other curiosities.
...