Poems | Sudeep Pagedar

To Console the Blind

Artwork: Matthew Bialer 

1. strange morning in limbo

yearning for that midway point,
for balance, that lingering semblance,
a hope, a hint, a glimmer or glint

But the centre is
illusive and I
am weighted,
fated, either
to be left behind or
right, ahead

I wish I'd understood
better, when they’d hung
my head and said
Nothing to be done.

relegated to a box;
a fenced farm:
fertile fields, growing
maze

Mercy, please! I
did not ask to be
a farmer, but
if I must, then
let me farm with a pen

should my crop fail,
only I
will starve


2. Fargone Conclusion  

wake.
Reach out from
your dreamed sleep
and call a name.
let it be
for every sigh of
pleasure
not arriving yet
at ecstasy

moments linger
in wasted hope
of semblance

so we stop
talking
of conversation
cease the broken
flow of chatter
that drips uneven
from confused faucet-mind

weavers weave
spinners spin
in the loom’s blur,
poems begin

so I began
without as much as
a thesis statement

but I am done with that
I'm through with those
Gods and Demigods
and semi-gods
and let me, Gods!
be done

with it all

but no.
I have not elapsed
yet, I could not let go
and don't know when, I
don't know if
with all my sight
I’ve ever caught
a glimpse of light through
eyes I sought

(to console the blind, the sighted tell
of the sightless' heightened sense of
smell)

or when un-lensed,
if I’d have sensed

of perfume, but just

a whiff


3. Turn

you sense me
and pivot,
turn

I spurn
your advance -
just one, single step
in that ritual dance
of denial

but I see double,
duplicity and trouble,
coming to pass
judgement without trial

cast out,
you turn about
the moment
of hopeful doubt,
gone by

you make to leave,
for good (and you should)
but stop, if you would,
to consider

the point at which
you swivel, turn,
is the one at which
I shrivel, burn,
born of contradiction
as I am: misshapen
halves coming together,
still less than a whole

all those dances,
they've taken their toll
and I'll have no more of
what's in store, of

that searing heat
the sun calls Desire:

Born of flame.
consigned to Fire.

and there's no turning,
no desperate yearning, when
for every high (above)
a beneath is birthed

you can't restart
when you've buried your heart
in over six feet of dearth