Vine 2, Vine 3, Vine 4, Vines, Vine 5
1. Auberangelo
From sky-jutting marbles,
Nature hews her finest vegetables! –
Smooth and grained to an extent,
They come from Carrara, you’d think.
Have some, friends, to know,
They induce powers, equal to Michelangelo’s!
– Bolbul
2. Wine of Sun
I love it when
My mind turns transparent
With a drink I call
‘A bottle of evening’.
I save the colors
On a brush for later –
They do come handy!
– Bolbul
3. At the Docks
Winter flowed into spring,
A full river carrying
Fishes of impressions…
After which an angler brush wielding
I was that evening.
Dabbing ripples of imitative making,
Of colors intensely light or dark
From Delhi University’s park…
Where stood purple, white, gold fringed stock…
I cast a net of canvas.
As afternoon flowed into evening,
Lovers and walkers gathered around watching
The jumping and jostling fish
Turn into colored wavelets,
Harbingers of spring… impressionistically etched.
– Bolbul
4. Interlocutor
He was antsy, the campus summer-somnolent…
When stepping to the hardcourts,
He found all surprisingly with occupants.
So offroad he drove that setting evening,
Toward a wooden barn imposing…
Horses, players akin, ran to welcome him,
Snorting loudly that Stanford
Was a farm in essence…
And this corner of the perimeter
Deserved more than a chance visit.
One who snout-brushed him,
Was Arabian and particularly demonstrative…
The two kept up a pacy conversation
Until darkness closed in
And to the courts he returned,
Practically glowing!
– Bolbul
5. On Leaded Waves
When a man puts a pencilled hand
On paper – a la Daumier –
It fills with waves…
Catching the display on its ridges,
Of the undergrowth of faces
And of ungirdling bellies,
As once seen in Paris!
– Bolbul
6. Kiss Me Quick
Plucked away from nursery buds… I wouldn’t flower. My slender, withdrawn buyer related, like a sister would. She would soothe talk me – often recounting the Fall colors of men. Her hurt made her glow and weep like a candle…
Last week she kissed me before this charcoal… her painter gifted.
I opened my arms for her!
– Bolbul
PS:
Portulaca or ‘Quick, Me Kiss’,
Are little, wild tropical flowers…
Hard not to love
But when lost, easy to miss!
7. A Bolt of Blue
Not even non-artists miss,
The red ornamentation upon green
Of a floral canvas –
Signed Coleus!
But a natural diva
Hides always and throws…
A surprise at us!
– Bolbul
8. Charfornia
Howling hills of lava red,
Smoked, pyre forests
Of my ocean blue state,
I witness afar…
Believing the war
To end hell’s embrace
Would be won with imagination
And the Omniscient’s grace!
– Bolbul
9. The Heart of Art
Heart ajudder, blurting a prayer,
His sight fades upon a stretcher…
Soon, a few oath bound men
See what God had in his heart… making him.
Aware of that,
They reopen his eyelids
With scalpel art!
– Bolbul
10. Living with Brown
What is blank and monotone,
Left by something of our own,
Fills with colors
When green falling to brown
Makes notes of resonant sounds!
– Bolbul
11. Viper Cool
Go solve my existential enigma!
On a hot tongue, I am the kiss of a viper
But ask the balcony breezes
Cooling scented, spellbound faces,
About my ambrosial flowers…
For I hold the twinned glory
Of contrarian powers!
– Bolbul
12. A Jungle Tiptoes In
A jungle walks into a house by chance…
Its underbrush the host wanders
When silence takes his hand…
Leads him to a keyboard of leaves
Playing murmurs as if Liszt
Was writing Waldesrauschen and still lived!
What romance!
– Bolbul
13. Painguins
Carrying its mandate to icily kill,
Even polar cold will
Crystalize in the chill
Of a mother emptying her feelings…
Tug warming a baby she knows,
Won’t feed or follow,
However achingly she wills.
– Bolbul
14. शब्द स्तब्ध
चंद फूल पीठ पीछे,
तुड़े मुड़े, हवा रंगें…
वैन गो बने।
ऊपर टंगा, रोशनी फेंके
चुपचाप कोई बल्ब…
चैपेल में हो जैसे।
मोम की बत्ती सी रौशन,
लड़की का दिल कहे…
रात का फैलाव
है कहानियों के लिए!
– बोलबुल
Book Halo
Coarse tulips paint air,
Ten short feet behind her,
In the manner of Van Gogh’s heirs…
A lamp ceiling-slung,
Casts light undisturbed,
As if from heaven’s loftiest rung…
A girl’s heart lit
Like a candle wick,
Feels… the night offers its expanse
For a story’s romance!
– Bolbul
15. Seat’s Far Edge
Never been two heartbeats on a sofa,
Who hunched easy
Or laid silently,
When it was the moon they longed for!
Never been a moon carrying two heartbeats,
Plucking all the stars,
That didn’t wheel about an Earth
With a skygazing sofa.
– Bolbul
16. परित्राणिता
रूप कामना की इति,
अजीब सी हुई,
नवयौवना कृष्णकुमारी की।
देख गौर वर्ण चांदनी
उसने ऐसी भरी आह,
कि नभ छोड़ बनीं
किरणें उसका लिबास।
याकि दो घड़ी में ही
चकाचौंध आँखों का त्रास।
भाग नदी में कूदी
वो लिए त्राण की प्यास।
सखियों, ज़िन्दगी की बिसात
जो जीतें… बदलें रंग नहीं
और के प्यादों के साथ।
– बोलबुल
Knight Rescue (Translation)
Stunning though earthy, a belle craving
For wheatish beauty,
Ended strangely…
Eyeing the platinum skinned moon,
She, one night so sighed
That rays, by her longing magnetized,
Spun around her like a shape hugging gown.
Dazzled head soon, unable to throw off the dress,
Out the village she fled,
To the dark but cool rivulet,
Whose watery refuge the rays couldn’t penetrate.
Saved, her folly the belle repented.
Hear young ladies, life’s a board of chess,
Never won by those who fawn
Over the color of the opponent’s pawns!
– Bolbul
17. Republican
Spurred by skylights sunny,
Tingeing the cold this January,
My mind retreated 26 centuries
To hometown Vaishali –
With her bronzed domes and ivories,
In the Republic of Lichchavi.
Folks in every walk
Could scarcely stop the talk
Of one Buddha and his disciple Amrapali.
So eloquent was that distant afternoon’s canvas,
I resolved to depict
My ancestral treasure-house!
– Bolbul
The State of Lapis Lazuli
They leave a country riven
For the contours of an airplane,
Within which they will make –
Rivers of tears, radiant with gems
Of grace sudden and deep as pain;
Peaks of rocky hope, high as the Paghman;
And earth embroidered, like the shawls of women.
The sky shall shelter the fleeing
For hours in borderless heavens,
Making the unrepressed, a model state
For trusting, handholding nations.
– Bolbul
Go Away from Les Cayes
(Haiti, 14 Aug ’21)
The ailing psycho underground
Will never come around… sigh…
Yet a way must be found
So neither its raised head nor laughter,
Spells damage or apocalyptic disaster.
Would science, planning, praying…
Come together someday
In such a way
That a cushioning wall
Will separate children of the world all,
Safeguarded from the subterranean thrall.
– Bolbul
Bolbul's Patch 