And the lamps are lit

Aur charag raushan hain.

Travails of the new teacher:

Me: "Let's start with the Elizabethan Age. Can anyone tell me who it's named after?"
Class: Profound silence
Me: "OK. The answer is Elizabeth I."
Someone from the back of the class, obviously relieved : Oooh, I know! Diana's saas. Chudail!!!
Me: speechless.

Returning to this seems really really strange. I am not sure I should.

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

—turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

The Sound

Marc says the suffering that we don't see
still makes a sort of sound — a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of — more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it's like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother's resigned sigh
when she sees her. It's like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It's shy, it's barely there. It never stops.

© Kim Addonizio

Coming in on a wing and a prayer

Am I really? The one existing wing is in pretty darn bad shape, sergeant. The prayer will have to make it alone, and is threadbare as it is.

What a wonderful world.

Right. Here we are. Silence still suits me better. And he writes as if words were snowflakes. Unique. Fragile. Momentary.

here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap

and to your (in my arms flowering so new)

self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain

and here’s to silent certainly mountains; and to

a disappearing poet of always, snow

and to morning’s beautiful friend

twilight (and a first dream called ocean) and

let must or if be damned with whomever’s afraid

down with ought with because with every brain

which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel (but up

with joy; and up with laughing and drunkenness)

here’s to one undiscoverable guess

of whose mad skill each world of blood is made

(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon

(From e e cummings’ No Thanks, 1935)