A couple of days ago, we got a brief respite from the Delhi summer. It was windy and overcast, and before we knew it, it rained. It felt strangely comforting, that rain - even if it was only short lived. The next morning I saw the cat that had just littered on the terrace of the building beside mine, with her two kittens. I watched them play for a while. It was a beautiful sight. I wrote a poem about what I felt:
Recess
Sombre morning,
soundless tears,
death's shroud
slowly descends.
On the terrace outside,
oblivious to the headlines,
a kitten darts to his mother.
Butting into her flanks,
he scams her
into feeding him.
His sister spies an opening
and leaps in next to him.
They’re snug
as two eyes shining in a smile
the colour of sunlight
and singing leaves.
I laugh
as they frolic
in a triangle of sun
How little it takes
to keep this world,
teetering on its axis,
from falling.
I share with you today, a poem by Vikram Seth from All You Who Sleep Tonight. The collection draws its name from another poem I have shared here before, a poem I return to all the time, especially during these times. I’d been thumbing through that collection, and I opened the page randomly to this poem today. I was thinking about nature, solitude, and about quiet observation. The poem describes a Night in Jiangning (ning translates to ‘peace’), its sights and sounds, before slowly turning to an interior landscape.
It felt apt.
Both these poems are wonderful companions. I have always been struck by Seth's "scent of imminent rain", an inner state, as much as climatic disposition, and your "a triangle of sun" has the same erasing of duality :)