Your death lingers, unfortunately,
Whenever the nightingale sings
Outside my window,
And I am forced to contemplate
How sounds must emanate from the bones
Of fragile beings
For them to be heard over
The footsteps of death’s confidants
In the endless commotion of their materiality.
To be heard thus,
Beyond the vacuum of the terrestrial,
The quietude of the void must reside
Within the cavity of bone shafts
Where songs outride waveforms.
I know you were there
When they burned the furniture
In the room where you last lived.
And I know they found your lungs unharmed,
With all the absorbed songs
Diaphanous and distilled.
And I know you guided the nightingale out,
Letting it escape with your liquid voice,
So, it can sit on the devil’s tree outside my window,
Absorbing all the air into its lungs.
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at editor@madrascourier.com.
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