SHUKLA, Vinod Kumar

A Street in the Bazar

A street in the bazaar,

A busy shopper,

Carrying a soiled

Slightly torn bag

In each hand,

One empty, one full.

Inside it, potatoes, leafy

Vegetables, a small packet

Of garam masala, and chillies,

Red or green.

How I wish I could've been

A ten-rupee note

And found shelter

In his bag.

But I was holed up

Inside my own.

Those That Will Never Come To My Home

Those that will never come to my home

I shall go to meet.

A river in flood will never come to my home.

To meet a river-like people,

I shall go to the river, swim a little and drown.

Dunes, rocks, a mountain, a pond, endless trees, fields

Will never come to my home.

I shall search high and low

for dunes, mountains, rock-like people.

People who work all the time,

I shall meet, not during my leisure hours,

but as if it was an important job.

This first wish of mine I’ll hold on to,

like the very last one.

For a ray of sunlight

For a ray of sunlight

that has lost its way

to come and try

and make holes in the darkness around me

is not what I want,

but that my darkness

not let the ray of sunlight

go astray.