ONE POEM – REMEMBERING A LOVER

This poem was recently published in The Canon’s Mouth Quarterly. It is a Birmingham based journal. The poetry speaks of an old lover’s wish to meet his beloved. The verse narrows to that one moment when he had kissed her. He wants to stop there and live that moment forever. This poem will be soon archived in UK’s poetry library magazine archive. The website is www.poetrymagazines.co.uk. I want to present this poem for today.

 

REMEMBERING A LOVER

 

Now that my children have flown

to the far East, as far as Burma

I have become an old man.

As with each episode

of numbness my body feels,

I know my bones are retiring.

I want to spend a few days with you

sharing how we could not live together.

How you had to marry a guy

who threatened to die

if you did not become his wife?

‘He had even cut his wrist’,

you wrote.

 

Then you had children;

A beautiful boy and a girl.

And now forty years have passed

but my soul still seeks you.

Each day, memories travel

to the tip of my old mind

and freeze.

 

I want to go back past your marriage;

Past the long corridors of the college,

The boring math lectures.

I don’t want to go as far as your school days.

I want to stop somewhere

at the first year of the college,

The year 1961, the month of December.

A sunny morning beside the long bridge

that linked your village

with mine.

 

Your golden hair, falling

and rising like waves on your shoulder

as you walked towards me.

I touched you there.

First on your hand,

then your face

and I reached as far as your lips

and kissed you for the first time.

I want to stop there

forever.

 

By: Nabin Kumar Chhetri