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Best Poems From
RANI TURTON
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121.
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Paths That Lead Somewhere
Paths that lead somewhere; do they know where they go?
Do they think of the pebbles and the thorns
That can wound your feet; do they imagine
Or ever ponder that distances are not the reason
You set out alone: that solitude could have made you
Retrace your steps fast enough if you had known.
If you had known that paths that lead you somewhere
But do not guide you along; sing, sing a lonely song;
That paths are just tracks, trails to be followed
And life is still to be walked along.
Rani Turton
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122.
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Pillow of Dust
He lay there unmoving; as still as the falling leaves
Around him drifting onto his weathered cheek.
The ground was hard, his legs were thin
His body wrapped in a dhoti that was clean.
How long had he starved, were his lips parched
A young man bent over him, said something
The old man didn't reply.
Was his village far away? Where were his children and why
Had he come here perhaps just to die?
Had he just decided to walk away?
Was his land parched, his crops rotten
His debts unpaid, his loans looming larger than life
Who could even presume to say?
He had laid his head down on a pillow of dust
He had lain down on a dusty pavement in an unknown town
Were there tears in his eyes, did he think of his wife
Who can even presume to say?
The next day the old man had vanished clean away
His place had been taken by a performing clown.
Copyright: Rani Turton
Rani Turton
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123.
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Pity When You Tore My Heart
Pity, when you tore my heart
I saw the world through different eyes
I saw the leper and the beggar and the lies
I saw the wounded, the sick and the homeless
I imagined sleeping in the rain
I imagined all my wordly possessions in a bag
I saw the tramps under the bridges
The tribes of beggars, the silent old
The solitude of millions tramping from work
Who had nobody to talk to
I remembered those who lost their jobs
And the thousands who lost their homes
I remembered those who had nothing to lose,
Who had nothing to lose
Never had anything to lose, nothing, never.
Pity I looked at the world through different eyes
Thinking about my good fortune and luck
Until, until one day I realised I could be pitied
By the poorest who lived in a shack
Seeing my restlessness and anguish
Even when things were going well
My selfish world, peopled with myself
Pity in poor people's eyes
My world, my ambitions and my disguise.
Copyright: Rani Turton
Rani Turton
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124.
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Poets
Poets have no tools, never
No tangible tools that is to say
Some people even call them fools
Poets have a different worldview
Built on emotions, sensations, lacerations
Splinters of pain
And all that the heart holds to be true.
Poets have no right way or wrong way
(Its true that they often lose their way anyway) :
Poetry has always been difficult to define
Scrambled thoughts, scrambled lines
That is to say
Perfect lines, perfect rhymes
Clockwork metric thoughts and thou and thine
Stanzas, couplets and all the rest of it
My emotions flew jagged against the sky
My thoughts often threatened to run away
Like me; I speak about pain and despair
People who are going to die
Corpus callosum, existence ad infinitum
Transient joy, the rainbow arching
Spectral armies marching
Tramping, tramping down history's worn-out lanes
And the lines in a stranger's face
His apparent despair, his evident pain
Jerk me from those absolute, imperfect rhymes
I am myself corpus callosum-like again.
Rani Turton
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