Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih Poems

Do not ask me the whys and the wherefores;
poetry is anoetic; you might as well question the rooster
or the plums, why they put on spring blossoms.
But how and when poetry first came to me?
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Friends, kindred spirits, civilized people all…
I'm not here to defend evil or the Taliban.
“Behind the Veil” has exposed them as a
weird breed raising sabres against beards and TVs,
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Like Shelley with his ‘blithe spirit',
I have often tried to understand
this man named Kynpham.
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We groan under the weight of Corona
the disruptions it has brought
the fear it has instilled in every heart
the cruelties surging from that fear:
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R. K. Narayan is dead.
Tonight, he sits, pensive,
in his bamboo chair
talking of a ‘very rare soul'.
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Gestating, she warned me
not to kill anything.
That was what her ancestors,
the old Khasis, had taught her.
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I could stay forever in this warm town
of grey dust and chaotic rickshaws,
learning lessons as from a book of fables.
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Girl of the highway!
I remember you yanking my nose
calling it “a cute duck nose”.
I remember you carrying off my watch
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'Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may
stand in the sun, so must you know pain'. — Kahlil Gibran

Alone on a birthday
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Dear friend, this is a letter
of cherries, this is a poem
born of cherries and my affection,
when the town is pink
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