I lived – air on tongue, light on hair, skin sea
Touched, fingers horse maned, tired eyes soft-pillowed
A last loving, wall builder drinking tea
In a garden rich with roses, willowed.
My dirt hands wrote and dug, planted in ink
Seeded commas and sentences, infant
Words grown from experiences, thought-linked,
Stained in the grain of the woods, indifferent.
I lived. Saw the dead rotting from war waste
Hasty hatred sucking at lives like sweets
As if there were some glory in the taste
Mouth-rimmed like newborns at their mother’s teats.
You live – and have seen what I’ve never seen
And taken my words where I’ve never been.
From ‘Loves’ a series of modern sonnets on the theme of love by Daniel Nanavati