Rajesh Joshi (India)

Between the two lines

Between the two lines of a poem I am the space that
always looks rather desolate.

It’s here that the invisible shadow of a poet often haunts.
I am a hidden galaxy of a poet’s cosmos.
Words often avoid trafficking here.
Some Helping Verb or a word left out in a great hurry
sometimes comes and rather sits, ill at ease on some
edge, nasal sounds and some accents keep peering
through my peripheries.

A great many sounds keep dropping here screening
through the words.
Sometimes some such connotations of words stray in
that like the wayward children ran away long back
from their homes.

I am not that passionless or non-vibrant a space that I
look to be,
a pause I am that comes abruptly in between conversation,
wherein there keep drifting the left-overs of the talks.
A number of secrets alleys shoot forth from my alleys that
can lead to an unexplored world of the poet kept hidden
from everybody.

In this woodland of the illimitable, there keep sporting
multitudinous images rather mysterious.

In the midst of the lofty fencing of the words, I am an open
sky wherein the eagles of a poet’s dreams have a long
flight. Behind the wall of the unseen here, there are
hiding some such tunnels that,
through their secret ways
lead to the story of the origin of words.

​Before showing yourself in, mind you, you putt off your
shoes outside
that there’s no sound of your footfalls.
Even an infinitesimal sound from without, will destroy
my entire magical telesma.

---