Three Poems by Arun Sagar Sagar, Arun. Three Poems. Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.3 (2013): 49-54. Web. Licensed Under: "Three Poems" (by Arun Sagar) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com. Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 49
Three Poems by Arun Sagar Liège Already I remember rain on the windowpane, the bus station an anchored ship, soft disco music. Already I remain onboard with early morning baggage smells, the driver s quizzical smile. This is the eternal problématique: 5 am, the impossibility of sleep or tears, streetlights through glass and rain. Each way out is worthy, each way leads to clarity and mist, and music. And you, too, are present here, the mere knowledge of it is enough; you too lean back in your seat, stretch your feet. You look at me as if to speak. Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 50
Normandy Rain And often there is sunlight on the white fabric of a dress, someone mistaken in the street, or through an olive grove, or wearing green stockings in a park, but the image fades like the bright square the cell phone leaves inside your eyelid, the fine rain that appears and disappears as twilight rushes through the bus still interior and the highway bends around Oissel and Vernon and Mantes-La-Jolie. But where were we? A name remains on the fogged-up pane until we sweep it clear, having glimpsed the landscape through its crooked letters. And now the darkening farms shift closer to each other and to us, the gap in between remaining out of sight, although night s inversion has begun to give it shape. But still the fences lengthen and complete themselves, the trees, houses becoming whole without their own shadows separating them from earth and sky. The scene Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 51
is well-established, the highway lights have not yet come to add their dash of romance - left to right a- cross the screen and to deepen the night into a desperate blue, yet even now the rain sneaks down, leaving miles and miles of grass not fit to sleep on. And often there is sunlight, cruel, not permitting sleep, the travelled hours forever lost, like the hours lost and won each spring and fall in northern lands. Strange notion that was at first for me to grasp, but where have I been all this while? Drinking chamomile tea, you might say not incorrectly, although sometimes I feel it s drinking me, the pale green cup unshaking on its tray. Black olives sicken with their strange unripeness; Sonny Rollins plays You don t know what love is, repeating endlessly. Italian coffee in the morning. Chocolate-covered cereal in a bowl of milk. The Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 52
memory of the taste is no different from its expectation, or so we would like to imagine, hungry and wet with the rain that has somehow seeped into the seats and the curtains that draw together but not enough to keep the dark outside. More rain, you almost say to yourself, or brighter moonlight. The lamps windmill against your pane, or, rather, a- gainst the outer of the two panes you call your own. I would draw the curtains if I could, or whisper in your ear - fabled sweet nothings - but sometimes all things shut down with warnings, the system overheated by the table s insulating finish, and we must wait till morning comes with sunlight - sometimes, grey skies and brighter, clearer rain to be starting over. Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 53
Giverny So this was your discovered peace, this overflowing green where flowers smudge and deepen in the setting sun, and paths dapple and stretch out to your door. I can see you standing here at your window sill, smoking your pipe and waiting for the trees to assume their colours, with each weightless decade passing like a change of seasons. Winter has already touched the evening s skin, blurring all human senses, and now the hour of closing shadows down in strokes of pine and sable. Three Poems Arun Sagar p. 54