Prayer for Good Friday

Splattered and smeared I have seen

Stones and stones with blood.

The agony in the faces,

The horror in the eyes,

The unspeakable torment that boils

In sabre-ridden entrails of night.

I have seen O Lord I have seen.

These are but glimmers that rise:

Moments of pity and fear.

Ours are passions that fleet –

Weeds that fuel

Some flames that fade.

Forgive us this day our sins

So that we may others forgive.

Beyond all sneers and howls of pain

Beyond all measures of debit and gain

Thine is the icon that bears

As scars, the price of our sins.

I know not what hope is left

For us that are reared in doubt.

Here we but toil and wait

Till thorns and nails have cleansed

The dross that shrouds our state.

Since My Reply...

Anxious as ever, with words I wrote,
I wonder in fear
What visions they disclose
And whether they had throbbed
In an expectant heart.

I tailored my words
As curtains that hang
On windows of soul,
Flicker and flutter -
Hiding with hints.

But what if they had rammed
On unwanting doors
And shown in their haste
More than was meant?

How else to explain
The silence that stalks
My inbox for months
With absence and pain,
Seemingly in vain!

Silent and shelled now I lie,
In wave-ridden beaches of time.

Season now of Broken Hearts

Along the night of sullen streets

Glistening still with twilight rain

Float and fall a thousand leaves,

Braiding pain in hundred wreaths –

Season now of broken hearts.

Wrapped around the seeping earth

Flap the scented winds of rain

And blow my way with breezy grace

Pictures of those rippling days

Sparkling still in wistful gaze.

Strange the ways of heart it seems –

Who knows how in seasons long,

In ways we never learnt in full,

The tides, they came and merging on

Surged together for some shore

Where they may in bridal song

For themselves some castles build.

I in golden muslin light

Stranded now in distant lands

Swarming with some unknown tongue,

Search for those in silent gaze

In those smiling eyes of yours

Which keep seeking dream-lit men,

Straddling who-knows-what green lane!

My verbs, they lack the Protean arts:

Season now of broken hearts…