Logbooks of Loss

My dried old walls, now deafened with screams
Lose their plasters and grimace into cracks
That shape into maps that'll wither and fold
And never speak a word of gardens in bloom
where we would walk and share our songs
In days that have left no traces in RAM
In these, our logbooks of loss.

Trudging without end of sores among thorns
Ours are gestures of refugees in camps
Who are told their rations are gone.

What names or faces or streets now are us?
Miles upon miles of disposable waste
And still not a plant for light from our trash.

Sands of Time

Polished on the whetstone of monsoon withheld,

The air now stabs at bones along spine

And drills little deserts in ribs.

Listen with intent and perhaps you’ll hear

Sand that oozes on banks of my veins

And heaps little dunes along shore.

Reared in gardens of apple-blossom days,

I am no Bedouin on steed.

Hence I am tired of dredging my veins

To search for miniscule moments of peace

Which still are drowned in barrels of sand,

Bare and barren to the core.

Resigned at last to my mummified state

These are my bricks for pyramids on page. 

Arundel Tomb in Waterloo by Thames

They entered and stood, stony and staid;

Nothing that’ll stir your heart as you moved

Punctual and fast in well-mannered calm,

Straight along tracks of Bakerloo line.

All with the newspapers flung open wide

Or tapped into headphones of exile of sorts:

Clusters of islands on move.

But there they had sat, her fingers in his

Even as he covered his eyes and sighed

As she looked on and pressed his hand tight;

Veins full of reciprocal tears.

Perhaps she had whispered, ‘Are you alright?

Perhaps a more consoling commonplace it was.

A long look followed their words and nods

And sighs that entwined their fingers more close,

Knotted into unflappable strength.

Stations and colours and people had passed,

There they had stayed unmoved.

Locked in my heart, I left them as such:

Arundel tomb in Waterloo by Thames.

[The poem is inspired by a real life event framed by a poem and an image: the following are the links to the poem by Larkin and the  image of the actual Arundel Tomb

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177058

http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/rdover/larkin/Photograph%202.htm]