December 2011
1 post
Dark Matter
sextillions of stellar
objects later I am that
which rhymes with
the read and re-read
almond, the spent pile, an ayat
of Leila. Night.
foaming at the mouth
the split moon has become
a silver scalpel here
is my head I do not ask
for miracles, only
your witness finger
your isosceles hands
trisect sky-angles, a velvet
mehrab, born of night’s blue
bruise, night you held
at bay...
November 2011
9 posts
Meenakshi
Each nightfall she braids
three rivers into knots
of silence, anchors
their shores to a
corner of fallen
sky and leaves
for the lost
land of moon-wells
You wont find
her she sleeps in
a sand-bed crumpled
like a paper moon on
the lips of
the Indus
The delta has
died and left its
gray ghost upon
the banks of
her shoulders
She wears it like a mantle of flowers
©2011...
Henna-Fish
confluent as the lines of your hands once
were, clenched tightly as you struggled
against the itch the urge to open
your palms to the skies and catch
the next rain of thought henna-fish
will be lost and never found
again on these tracks there must
be borders or else chaos ruins
the filigree she warned squeezing
drops of clove tea over the drying
islands I told her I was writing
a...
Dispersal
the windshield is
a cinema raindrops
patrons throngs arriving
leaving arriving I cannot
look not now not
ever says a muffled
voice in the back before
the shatter all rain
begins as rime hexagon
prism seed spell snow
grows in your sky
womb until crystal
succumbs
© 2011 Sophia Pandeya from the poem series Water, Memory
Fleur de Sel
The first memory was a white
blindness a braille of
salt that water leaves
behind like a wayward lover making
a trail of tell-tale deserts
in his path a slow burning writes
scrolls on your cheeks a garland
of tiny skulls holds
the dark ocean you crossed
to become this flower
© 2011 Sophia Pandeya - from the poem series Water, Memory
October 2011
1 post
SAAL-GIRAH
i dwell in
borders, the sea
tress tangled
on lake summer’s
waning hairline
writhing as if stirred
by some deep
serpent just now
awaking from coiled
sleep to the ends
of earth, birth
day is saal-girah,
yet another
year-knot tied
in life’s slowly
shortening
string
strings are cut at
birth, the first knot
tied and stilled, recedes
into dark navel-seed
from which...
September 2011
4 posts
OFFERING
At times the lake-brow is
furrowed, at others, calm
and polished as a mirror
See this and cup your palms
as if they were holding
water, or a floating prayer
© 2011 Sophia Pandeya
GRACE NOTE
water is a woven light, knit
by gliding looms of wind
you scan the lake shore for
the grey heron’s wingspan
once an almost invisible
sibilance now vanished
into the sea of sky
instead a lone grace
note plays its white
key on waters’
edge the long
necked lean of
a solitary egret as
it waits the loom
lifts scent of wild
fennel into swirls
of sweet about
you, tiny yellow
...
July 2011
4 posts
A Raft of Paper
“All facts lead eventually to mysteries.”
William Gedney
You remember a vague
turpentine chaos before
water became a nameless
flood, slipping a flattened
horizon thin as a raft
of paper under your
door and you sang
all the way downriver
You left a city
and entered
another, lost in the layers
that masquerade as Time
you eventually became
an orange pinwheel
a glass...
SANGEENA
Sangeena ( The Grave One)
Ask
for me
tomorrow &
you will find
me climbing
a pyramid of
flightless
moths
Inquire
thereafter and
i will answer in
Mayan hieroglyphs
tendrils weeping
out my
ears
In a thousand years
i will become
all that you have lost
©2011 Sophia Pandeya
April 2011
2 posts
The Missing
The hour slipped
from the cold metal
needles that knit
her days, vanishing
like a dropped
stitch
© 2011 Sophia Pandeya
February 2011
2 posts
Our Lady Of Perpetual Velocity
from the double walled
lozenges of the airplane
sea was nothing but a
wrinkled skin between
us, a fugitive
parchment resisting
all comment
far below the boats criss-
crossed like tiny
question
marks
© Sophia Pandeya 2011
October 2010
1 post
September 2010
1 post
SECOND SKIN
The poem
dwells in the unexpected
music a flock
of egrets caught
like an uncertain pause
in the river’s
throat your voice
as it falters on the volatile
notes the crescendo
of crickets endlessly weaving
the night blanket pockmarked
by odysseys by scars
of stars the poem is a name-
less thief stealing
a few droplets of night only
to be pecked open
in a cacophony
of crows that...
April 2010
2 posts
RIVER ON FIRE
You lay, at my
feet, an apology
for the river of
memory, a thin green
sickle snaking along
the brittle bones of
a riparian palimpsest
denuded as a muddy
eyelid, unable to weep
at the apostasy
the betrayal
of Water
You were invincible
once, taming armies
of conquerers with
bleeding feet, Indus
where all must
stop and go
no further
Now on your
desolate shores
songs vanish
...
November 2009
1 post
THE SEAGULL
Aerial wave, white as the tip
of empty thought you
appear, sudden as the lone
wind in a blink, an eclipse
of eye
sorrow’s blind passage
opens to your body
of light
circling the paradoxes
of my driftwood
and barnacle mind
Sun-flake, white as the blinded
wings of Icarus
your breast
of white rose
Concealed a bud, an aureole
burning a marine
...
September 2009
1 post
July 2009
5 posts
SLEIGHT OF SAND
Ebb tide is a sleight of sand
Glistening like sweat on necks
Of hard galloped ocean horses
Beached at the open mouth
Of night’s embrace, leaving only
A mane of sea foam, shivering
Ebb tide is a sleight of sand
A shape shifting cipher slip-
Knotting strands of memory
And absence, sly sheltering
Hermitage of self-shells
Close held and buried in the
Deft sea clamor of sameness
Ebb tide...
WHERE I HAVE BEEN WHILE THE TAMARIND
The fitful shade sleeping
In scarlet metronomes of foxgloves
The galloping heart like a seahorse
In the grassy oceans of eardrums
The light as it dies slowly
In the green cleft of silence
The spaces, always the spaces
The left-lings watching from a distance
The angle of dreaming’s elbow
The bone of your sea at evening
The ash flicked from Time’s finger
The pages burnt at the heart
The...
June 2009
3 posts
EPHEMERON
Night you sleep
in my eyes, ancient ink
your aeons curled up, feline
spurning the ides of day that leave
me these rubbled lexemes these frayed
splittings of words running like fingers
of a lost wind in my tangled mind
The cold scalpel moon has bled you night,
to a paler shade of black faded
as my boat unmoored,
waded in your sky of shards
Aldebran, Orion, the unbraided
strands of...
MONSOON
Unexpected
Rain in June
Left a fragrant
Signature
In the air
The deep scripture
Of earth writing a
Memory of other
Sweltering noons
Suddenly the rain
A second skin
To be quenched in
Simply drenched in
Open every window
Ventricle and door
Strum the gourds, hum
The chords, magick
The Raag rising
On limpid strings
The wings of taans
Will bend the bow
Of space and time
...
May 2009
10 posts
LAMENT
Many rivers have drowned in me and now
The lament is a scroll of water, a sigh
unfurling on the blank pages
of upturned sky
Swirling cipher, a tongue
tide shore, curlicues of foam
asking again, again
the same
Unanswered question….
© 2009 Sophia Pandeya
BIRTH
And so it is,
that the stiff
white sheet
of day arrives
Like a sliver
hanging on
eternity’s
clothesline
To be soiled
and tossed away
in forgotten
corners
Of time
and space
where years
accumulate
Like so much
laundry until
by chance
a stray
Thread is
pulled from
the pile of lost
thoughts
To be
delved and
mulled anew
to be...
THIS EMPTY BOWL
Evening is a vague unrest
a fevered body of rose
and blue embrace struggling
to still the sun that slips,
slit and steeping into the deep
opiate of sea until the whole
of earth and sky is sunk
phosphorescence
reeling on my tongue
and suddenly, nothing’s left
but this empty bowl, these dregs
of spinning stars drunk
in night’s cup…
© 2009 Sophia Pandeya
ELEGY
And Wednesday comes
Wearing a sky of ash
On her forehead
Countless pointillist
Pinpricks, raindrops
Are born and die, the
Instant vapor invisible
Canvas on my warm
Windshield as I speak
White thread is wound
Between headstones
To mark the newly bed
In earth’s womb. Who
Will mark the graves
Of living dead?
Who will give them
A hope, a shred?
© 2009 Sophia Pandeya
THE SECRET OF WATER
Her eyes are koels
Carrying in their dark
The somber grace
Of banyans, the cry of lightning
The secret of water..
© 2009 Sophia Pandeya
April 2009
4 posts
JEALOUS MORPHEUS
I tried to conjure oblivion from the keeling lamps of eyelids
Instead, out came a puzzled genie then another and another…
Who offered me everything in the world
Except what I desired most
The deep and dreamful nectar that you keep,
Jealous Morpheus, in the secret places
Between this world and the next….
© 2009 Sophia Pandeya
