Dilip Chitre Poems

My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes
...

In the light of birds the lunatic wakes from uncountable sleeps
His burning electric wires begin to glow
Birds sing in every forest of flesh and blood
The lunatic's fingers turn into strings in the outer silence
...

At midnight in the bakery at the corner
While bread and butter-biscuits are being baked
I remember the Rahman of my childhood
...

Like a painting by Velazquez
A woman stands
Alone in the frame
...

I had promised you a poem before I died
Diamonds storming out of the blackness of a piano
Piece by piece I fall at my own dead feet
...

The house of my childhood stood empty
On a grey hill
All its furniture gone
...

I am backing home where you died.
One year later, to find
Changes that mask our surrender
To the inevitability of life.
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Hidden in my skull are the caves where the endless
Reticular frescoes of my awesome childhood Unroll.
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Through her blood's lightly layered
Hazy darkness
Lightning flashes out branches of my being
When, through intoxicated wet leaves
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Determined to tell lies
People are able only to tell the truth -
Said Rahman
...