Ghazal for Another Night
The progress that never arrived ends in a frenzy tonight.
When he enters the frame and declares emergency tonight.
As we march to Court, our pens are seen as matchsticks in their eyes.
The fear they carry will be quelled by insurgency tonight.
We say to the policemen: beat us if you have to, still we will
stand. But even they exercise leniency tonight.
And who are with us and who are not, that’s for you to decide.
Just hurry your heart along, just bring the urgency tonight.
We touch our candles together, our flames ignite the clouds. On
the Antillas of the world, we end dependency tonight.
Shadows of flame dance on the walls of his cabin: For the love
of possibilities, Minister, step out and see tonight.
And here, now it comes, this revolution you once thought
impossible. Adi sings, O’ agents of no agency tonight.
Kolatkar’s Butterfly is Seen Again
The afternoon screams of a toddler stick on
to the butterfly as it shines through glass rotating
like spoonlight. Its only memory is its possession
of wings that hold the image of that screaming
child. Somewhere within the frame is this blinking
of orange there, and here, then there again, then
in the air between the fallen lawn and the falling
leaves. Say, what invented geography does it
navigate, what tunnelled solidity of empty
space does it so endlessly flit through?
It vanishes into sunlight as if it came from it.
Skepticism
I.
Wait for the wind to splash into you
as if it were something truer
than what it seemed.
Occasionally, ask if currents are real—
Vines, is the trembling of your leaves
in anticipation of breeze?
II.
Startle at the window screen:
How it never forgets to glow
at dawn, to fade at dusk.
Watering those cacti on the sill,
Watch them effuse with colours—
Surprising Greens, Tea-Shot
Browns, Yellows… as if light
were only an excuse
for the objects to shine.
I, Patient of Incompleteness
I'm still typing the last sentence of this poem,
When you begin whispering in my ears.
The words pause on my fingertips:
To look at you, is to wait.
Then, letting my hands move along the borders
Of your body, the words quietly flowing into the
arabesques of your skin, are losing their rhythm to
yours. I nibble on your earlobes as curled as a.
Adithya Patil is a student based in Bangalore, India. His poems have appeared in different journals including Muse India, Modern Literature, Literary Yard and Borderless Journal among others. He was a recipient of the 2019 Times Scholars Programme.