Floating On Someone Else's Coffin Poem by Jay Kasturi

We are here for the craft
of sealing every empty corner
with a word or two; even if all had been
learnt from the sun and the moon,
even from love’s healing, we would still
float on one word, like Ishmael,
on someone else’s coffin,
on someone else’s testament.

Like two lines strolling down to the horizon
eyeing each other,
inventing the distance between them,
asymptotic aversion,
hoping to hold hands in the end
under the blue awning of the sky,
I too pass this way never meeting
with life's unoffered words.

(1997)