End of winter
ice all gone
the city a treasury
of ash
Poems on the topic: city
Poems on the topic “city” on Poets.by.
Domestic arrangements
Took leave of all the keys
and the old told clock
there in the city of money
where I drank an hour,
where a black chair resolved
to satisfy the bed.
* * *
poetry festival
someone says the lake
isn’t a lake
in wild–
flower beds now
only the cosmos
200 years
after Keats’ ode
autumn persists
churchyard labyrinth
zeroing in
on the X
where the dead
are said to sleep
my autumn face
skyline
Autumn Metropolis
peace garden
the nonresistance
of leaves
back alleys
it’s not whether but how
we go to seed
Blizzard
it is winter
and we speak
with passionate hands
in the world beyond
there will be no ground
that is not white
I go bone by bone
through the whole
strange city
Skyline
the moving domes
of umbrellas
London from Above
Ten thousand red-brown
mouths of chimney pots
gape at us as we descend,
jet engines howling, into the haze—
a mutual amazement.
Here is the yellow air
of our to-and-froing.
Here are the housing estates
and the scrapyards,
groomed swards of a park
and chaotic allotments,
the circling traffic.
There’s the river and
its slick sheen of a carcass.
Plane trees all in a line
make faint, green gestures
* * *
I walk away, along the riverbank
thinking that I'll be okay,
never to return, footsteps
that lead away from the city lights
and no one can tell me to stay
because no one's in my head,
and no one sees myself like I do.
No one knows my fate,
and no one sees the journey I face.
If they did, they'd turn away,
losing hope for me,
but who is there to say
there's no more hope for me?
Next day, I look around to see
just how far I came,
never to return, footsteps
City Rider
Twisting and turning
Speeding and slowing
Through the labyrinth of streets
Braving the noise, the crowds
Boxed in by tall buildings
The bike rushes as if to escape-
Suffocated, nearly strangled.
It climbs a flyover
Higher, over the lowly lot
A blooming Gulmohar
By the side, smiling
And then – a patch of sky –
Bright, white
And farther, a deep blue.
Haiku 8
This particular
shifting of the rain, I am
just in time for it.
Lemon-drop lamp
and its wavering life
reflected in the chai.
Scrawlings, backwards,
in the glass, in the sun,
downtown escalator
Red clouds catching sun,
the hole at Sixth Avenue
dark in minutes.
“Red cells save lives”
reads the bus for the blood drive–
black letters on white.
It’s happened again
Haiku 15
The ambulance man
he sees me, my northbound bus,
then runs to the west.
Gasoline can, spilled
then righted, five yards away
sunny-hot pavement.
Yes, Lloyd Building,
Yes, Int’nl Teriyaki,
Stay, feeble sunshine!
Five pigeons, rooftop
one does a dance while the rest
perch, vigilant.
Does anybody
think, of this old bench, and its
conversation husks?
“I can’t stand the rain”–
Hometown
At the back of my mind
Lies an undigested piece of thought -
That I have to leave my home tomorrow.
My bike carries me through these streets
Along the familiar scenes, pauses
At the places so known to me -
The coffeshops, bookshops, my haunts -
The libraries, the gardens, my previous office
The corners where I have hung around,watching
The milling crowds, a few faces recognized and nodded at.
Faces from my past, faces that have grown old with mine.
The city has grown, its roads wider and cleaner
Trees and corner shops have given way
To malls and multistoreyed monstrosities.
I try hard to remember what were there before
The old, tile-roofed houses replaced
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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