Saturday, December 12, 2015

TWO






Two little mynahs
sitting on a  hedge:
One for sorrow,
Two for joy.

A little girl who believed
in fairy tales,
Blue lotuses lived
in her midnight eyes.

Bread and butter,
Woe and mirth,
Lightning and thunder,
Breath and death.
Life is measured out in pairs—
A duet tuned to disaster:
Two tablespoons, please.

What do you do with a poem
whose couplets
refuse to rhyme?

Would you tear it up
into a million flakes
that snow down upon
your summers and springs?

Would you torch it alive,
Let the howls hound you for life?

Would you incinerate it,
Scatter the ashes
beneath your dreams?

Or would you keep rewriting
till your blood runs dry
and you run out of reams?

A sunrise frozen in a teardrop,
A bulrush gasping in a heath,
A forlorn slice of moon in a bedraggled sky,
Some couplets can never rhyme.