Poetry: Pramod Rastogi

Pramod Rastogi

Pramod Rastogi

Emeritus Professor

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland

Love's Blushes

Love's agonies know no bounds.

The wound is deep, and it weeps.

Ineffectual are the remedies.

Smitten by a maiden's eyes,

I must pay a pilgrimage to her site

And relinquish myself to her care.

Sweet is the nectar that keeps me drunk.

Sweet are the enamored dreams

Which, like Pied Pipers of Hamelin,

Have lured me into a forest dense

With emotions, where I savor 

The honeyed fruits of passion.

Love blushes with its fancies.

Once you inhale its fragrant tonic 

Your wits go into a state of seizure, 

And the poets enjoy a field day

Composing on these lovelorn souls 

A lore that will keep their trade alive.

***

 

Petals of your Love

Seasons file past my aging youth

Each day I spend waiting for you.

You have never retraced your path,

Yet I have kept your memories ablaze,

Have not let them die down into ashes.

I have silvered my heart into a mirror 

To see reflected in it 

Our moments of companionship lost.

If you ever returned by this path

You would see the desolation 

That has befallen this lane. 

Lovers shudder to take this path.

Flowers no longer adorn the plants.

It would be futile to look for a bud 

To offer it to one's tormented love.

If you were ever to retrace your path, 

Knock at my door, my love,

To see me in a tattered state 

With a notebook in my hands,

Signed with the ink of your devotion,  

And carrying petals of your love

That you had left for me inside.

Even dry, they still smell of our love.

***

The Call of a Cuckoo

I love the call of the cuckoo

And the feeling it drips into its notes   

That evoke in me a strange thirst 

Which I have failed to unlock, 

Leaving my mind in a restless state

With beads of longing echoing in me.

In the call of a cuckoo resides

The longing in a lover's heart,

Restless to meet his love. 

A half-moon hangs in the sky. 

Each day takes an age to walk, but

Many such ages he has survived

Without laying eyes on her.   

What type of mystery is love

That makes days count like ages?

What type of flame is love, 

Which, once started burning,

No extinguisher can stall?

Love’s passion has taken on wings,

Ready to break away from the path

That the wise have tread. 

Not far away was the devastation. 

He had yet to discover how to apologize.

Civility was not his stronghold

And he had still to imbibe remorse.

But if ages were to stretch on, 

Alas, succumb he will to his demons. 

Before that fateful day arrives,

O cuckoo, please go to his love 

And let her listen to your music.  

While she is lost in your poignant calls,

Soothingly drenching the void in her heart,

He will surrender himself to her mercy.

***

---

Setu, July 2023