Three Poems by Ashok Niyogi: Golden Temple, Border, Memorial

Golden Temple

carp

orange red
silver grey
white

carp gulp up
the eleventh day moon
and open their mouths again

to light wavelets
on the nectar

a temple all golden
waxes and wanes
in crests and troughs

on Bose speakers
my heart is a harp

Border

razor wire rolls
rip serpentine fog

lights
green yellow and red
sing high voltage
barbed wire

thin angle-iron
meanders
to the map-maker’s whim

corn fields
are already in night

our fog beats a retreat
to their bugles
electrocuted
by our song

overhead
a flight of swallows
swoops in from our east
banks
and flies
on into their sky
their red
setting sun

Memorial

what struck me first
is how far away
the firing positions were
from the walls with bullet-holes

which now need preserving in wooden frames
rather innocuous
as a backdrop for tourists with digital cameras

such mayhem
must have required good aim

and then I am engulfed in shame

all my life I have tirelessly endeavored
to teach myself and train
that I could pick up the guns
of those that massacred
and learn their language
so that I could write to them

Copyright 2008, Ashok Niyogi. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.

Ashok Niyogi has published a book of poems, Tentatively, and has been extensively published in print and on-line magazines and in chapbook form in the USA, UK, Australia, India, and Canada. At retired for several years, he cashew farms, writes and travels. He divides his time between California, where his daughters live, Delhi, and the Indian Himalayas.