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Best Poems From
RANI TURTON
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145.
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Sixty Hours
Smoke, blasts, billowing clouds
Billowing curtains from carved windows
The railway station now also has it's widows.
The city, in a daze, unable to grasp
Daily life has stopped; now suddenly
Mumbai, in a stupor tries to awake from
This nightmare without an end.
One dawn, many down.
Second dawn, many down
Third dawn, day has come
What will this city become?
Sixty hours of tears, fears and passion
Sixty hours of waiting, hoping for compassion
The rat-tat-tat carries on, carries on
The loved ones have go on to become
Victims, heroes, or statistics
When the day is finally,
Finally and irrevoccably done.
Cry, city, cry
Shed your lonely tears on the beach
Sixty hours, and your loved ones
Are far beyond your reach.
In this dying we are all one
In tragedy we are all one.
Now our day is, with sad finality done.
Copyright: Rani Turton
26,27,28 November 2008
Dedicated in hommage to the victims and those who who gave their lives to protect the city.
Rani Turton
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146.
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Smoke, Mist and Nebulous Things
Tell me then your perceptions of the past
Tell me why hard facts are hard today
Facts tomorrow, then gone away
Do facts, then, rarely last?
Watching the march of time, the artefacts
The ruins they continue to dig up day by day
What remains of those wonderful beings
Who peopled our fables and myths
Smoke, mist and other nebulous things
Spirited them away
Tiptoe in historys corridors
Crowns, coins and chariots
People, peasants, and simple folk
Just spirited clean away
Where do they lie now?
Unknowns jostling in historys corridors.
Queens, courtesans, mothers of kings
Toys and things, necklaces and dreams
Smoke, mist and other nebulous things
Spirited them away
Tiptoe in historys corridors
The modified history of the world
Domination, nomination, abomination
Smoke and mist and nebulous things
Have spirited everyone away.
Rani Turton
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147.
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So Acute Was My Loneliness
Cobbled stones, not dust.
So acute was my loneliness that dream I must.
Escapism was a flight from dreary realism.
.
If roam I must, if chains I must break
Alone, in this pebble-strewn destiny
My happiness I must fake.
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So acute was my loneliness that home was far
Too far; too far and distant my loved ones and my thoughts
That in that black cosmic wilderness even the North Star
Seemed close enough to touch. That even my words
Seemed transparent and tinted with Orientalism
.
So distant and cold, so empty my worlds.
So acute was my loneliness even the poems would not come
The words fled, the streets wet, a spectre I had become
My memories tinged with the bitter things I had done.
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All alone. When dawns touched my lids after fitful sleep
I had resolved never, never to weep
However deep the pain. However acute the pain
The sun would shine tomorrow and I would become myself again.
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Copyright: Rani Turton
Rani Turton
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148.
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Sometimes When I Forget
Sometimes when I forget
Where I am, where I will be tomorrow
Blessed memory can take me on it's wings far, far away.
When the pain gets too much
Pass my finger across the strings
The wooden body hums, the wooden body needs that much.
The flesh is weak but the mind,
Permits some delusions
The time for illusions has gone.
Sometimes when I forget
Where I am, where I began
Where I am and what I've become:
Insomuch
Where I can be in the long years to come.
Copyright: Rani Turton
Rani Turton
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