Keki Daruwalla Poems

Migrations are always difficult:
ask any drought,
any plague;
ask the year 1947.
...

Fire-lit
half silhouette and half myth
the wolf circles my past
...

Corn is great, on the cob or otherwise,
but before corn in the ear there was life.
...

The sea came in with her and her curved snout
and her tin coloured barnacles
and long threaded rose moles
patterned on her body.
...

The hive slept like Argus
its thousand eyes covered with bees.
...

Long and lonely are my nights.
Come help me Goddess, end my blight;
her absence burns me, burns my sides
with love intense.
...

Perhaps I'll wake up on some alien shore
In the shimmer of an aluminium dawn,
...

I am alone in the house.
It is warm
but I feel cold.
The doors swing open across the years.
...

If you want
a cage, my dear
you do not have
to travel far.
...

They are naïve, those who suggest
that the fortunes of the ruler
and the ruled go hand in hand.
Take the plague of 1350,
...