A Thought-Mail To An Absent Spouse Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Go, dumb notebook,
Get lost in a trunk of old papers.
I who could not give you speech,
Am tongue-tied by the blight,
Afflicted by the doubter's sloth.

This festive day we have to be
Afar but close enough to feel proximity.
The candles of Divali night
Are squiggles on our balcony.

We seek no portents there,
In the casual art of wind and flame.
Enough that they burnt
With fierce futility
As your freight of tallow.
- - -
21 October,1979
New Delhi