Sunday 17 February 2019

News from Nowhere IV




You know, I left my raincoat on the hook
because I wouldn’t need it on the road –
three hundred suns per year, promises made good,
and at a pinch the sheet wrapped like a cloak.
Does it hang there still? Do you sometimes look
in passing in its pockets for a note?
a memory? - perhaps remnants of some mute,
faded smells of rain and cigarette smoke.


It drizzled here today but it was brief.
I went walking without a waterproof –
the rain was like your fingers on my face.
But all rain feels the same in every place,
wherever I go, however far I move –
some strange fluttering bliss akin to grief.






Well, V-Day has come and gone, and as in most other years, I'm continuing with my own version of love poems to mark the month. Because love is kind of an everyday thing around here, in addition to being a many splendoured thing of course.  Love is the dressing in life's salad bowl, it holds the salad together, makes the greens glisten and adds the zing, but you don't really talk about it much. It's made everyday without a fixed recipe, which was really a list of ingredients scribbled down somewhere on the stub of a ticket or something. Gone missing for years now, but it doesn't matter because it's a conditioned reflex anyways, if you know what I mean. 



On a more sombre note, the news out of India was terrible on the 14th, 44 jawans killed in the most atrocious and audacious suicide bomb attack in Kashmir. Or maybe not so audacious, given that we never seem to learn anything from our mistakes. Not one single thing! Terrorists can storm our parliament, besiege an entire Indian city, massacre security personnel at our border posts at will, kill dozens of them on the most heavily guarded road. Just like that. It turns my brain inside out to even think of it. 


Respect and thoughts for the soldiers and their families. 


13 comments:

  1. That is terrible. It is mind-boggling all right.

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    1. It's horrifying the level of violence and random cruelty.

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  2. What a tragedy. I could never understand how people can kill a bunch of strangers.

    Not only does rain feel the same in every place, but if you close your eyes, it often sounds like steak frying in a pan.

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    1. Haha yes it sounds exactly like a sizzler... now that you mention it. I don't even have to close my eyes.

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  3. Heartbreaking news. And sadly all too common.
    Without love, life loses its flavour. Not necessarily 'romantic' love, but some manifestation of it is an essential.

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    1. Yup, and loving is probably more important than being loved, which is also a fine thing.

      'If equal affection cannot be,
      Let the more loving one be me.' W.H.Auden.

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  4. Hari OM
    There will always be radicals. A sad and horrifying truth. Such things cause rain in my heart... YAM xx

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  5. the rain can mix with tears. Your poem moved me

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    1. That's the nicest thing you could have said. Crying in the rain is a neat way to hide the tears.

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  6. This is an excellent case of weather reflecting the story. Horrifying in so many ways, but hardly unique as shown by the suicide bomber in Kashmir so recently. Your heart breaks or bleeds, doesn't it?

    Denise

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    1. It's outrageous and heartbreaking at the same time. Life can be so unfair sometimes..

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  7. Hi Nila - terrible ... and now with Dhaka and that complete sadness of the lax regulations in the ancient area of the cities.

    You've captured life as it is ... but loving is so important - helps all ... cheers Hilary

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