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R.S.

R.S. resides in India and writes poetry to find harmony in life. She graduated with honours in English and loves to read and write poetry. She is fond of music and likes to play the piano. She is greatly influenced and inspired by the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, W.H. Auden and William Butler Yeats, to name a few. She loves going out for nature walks and rises early to feel inspired with the morning star and create new rhymes.



When The Dust Settles

What shall remain when the war is over,
The charred debris of a four-leaved clover?
For prayers slip away like sand from the fist,
When compassion is lost in a blinding mist.

As the cacophony looms in tumultuous skies,
It's raining tears from humanity's eyes.
Candles are burning, hands rising to pray,
Will this night ever see the light of day?

Frightened and scurrying like mice in a quake,
A child snuggles close to the bosom, awake;
On the street an old man stumbles and falls,
Nobody hears or heeds his calls.

What fumes are these, born of hate and fury;
Will there be no relief from heaven's jury?
Smoke stings the eyes like spiked leaves of the nettle;
Who shall sweep the ground when the dust will settle?



Come Let Us Kiss And Part

(The title was inspired by Michael Drayton's famous poem.)

Since there's no help come let us kiss and part
As we unclasp our hands and move away;
Let your glistening eyes no longer betray
The aches and cravings of your heart.

Let us forsake our pledged vows,
That no more firmly hold the solid ground,
As the distant tolling bells resound
And the frost smears the willows' boughs.

Perchance you sit by our familiar hearth,
And douse the smoldering embers that remain.
Ah love, do not dissemble and complain
To the heavens above and the ruthless earth.

Then let us kiss and part as we now strive
To dwell in willful abnegation.
(Though I'll keep waiting at our love's old station,
For the train that seems unlikely to arrive).



If Death Had Passed Us By

If death had passed us by
Never glancing at my bower,
Had not crept so stealthily in
And plucked my most cherished flower,
I would not be scanning the sky,
With my heart so encrusted by scars;
Searching for you each night
Among the unreachable stars.

If death had passed us by,
Without its caravan stopping;
Or sailed quietly away
Without its anchor dropping;
I would not be sifting sands,
Tracing each wave,
Picking the most beautiful flowers
To lay at your grave.

If death had passed us by,
You would still have called me Mother
And blessed me like no other.
Is it impertinent to ask of the Gods
Why they severed our sweet bond on earth;
If the Angels hadn't reclaimed you,
Would the heavens have been such a dearth?



Stop All the Clocks

(Title and poem inspired by W.H. Auden's poem)

Stop all the clocks, stop all humdrum,
Silence the warblers, their song and hum;
Bid the sun to just stand by
And the moon to remain in the starless sky.
He was my dusk, he was my dawn,
Stop all the clocks, now he is gone;
Quiet the hymns, the evensong,
I thought love would last, but I was wrong.
Stop the earth, its constant spin,
Wring the brooks, subdue the din;
Draw the blackest drapes in the sky,
Tell every star to shut its eye.
Cover the hills in blackest shrouds,
Unleash the rain from the darkening clouds,
Scrape the rainbow, call truth a lie;
Prepare the coffin, let me die.



April Is the Cruellest Month

(Title inspired by T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land")

April is the cruellest month,
Harbinger of hope, summer's prelude;
Springing daisies, springing lilacs,
At best a fleeting interlude.

For hope ignites a sweltering fire,
And turns to ash sweet content;
April begets whims and desire
In hearts wallowing in torment.

It saddles yearning to the heart,
Till desire becomes its innate nature;
April is the cruellest month,
With fickleness its signature.



Your Careless Heart

What could prove your heart might care,
When yearning for you, I could only stare?
My tender heart grew numb and still
As the rain-drenched night quivered from the chill.

Upon the moor when the cold winds stirred,
The mist drew nigh and the moon grew blurred;
There, pining for a love-filled glance,
I stood and looked at you askance.

No smouldering fire could ever suffice
To melt your heart carved out of ice;
For a sky bereft of clouds cannot impart
rain—too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.



Echoes of Departure

The swallows fly South when harsh winds blow
But I stay here, with nowhere to go;
Wish I could be windborne and free,
Or float like driftwood out to sea.

The vacant boughs of willows mourn
Lamenting love's brief sojourn;
The sun leaps and drowns in the west
While this sorrow lingers in my chest.

Like wisps of smoke my days dissipate,
While winter's viols patiently wait
For spring to melt their frosted strings,
So the strains may soar upon love's wings.

As the lights flicker in the darkening sky,
I pine and ponder, heave a sigh;
Why is parting long yet love so brief,
Dwelling forever in towers of grief?



The Chalice of Love

Your kiss washed away like topsoil in a flood,
Your tender words, distant rumbles of a retreating train;
The letters you wrote with a blood-dipped quill
Flutter like stray leaves against my window pane;

Your vows retreat like ebbing tides;
Our sunny grove stands shrouded in lament;
Your silhouette has faded with the eventide,
The chalice of love lies empty and spent.



Love Looks Not With the Eyes

(Title inspired from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream")

Love looks not with the eyes,
In recesses deep, it sits and yearns;
It seeks not recompense, nor a prize,
Once kindled, it forever burns.

A flush of woe adorns its face,
As it quivers like a falling leaf;
It flaunts sorrow with a grace
Under sequestered canopies of grief.

It treads the paths less traveled,
Where familiar winds do not blow;
The gleam of love when unraveled,
Retreats to the skies to glow.

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