BEFORE I AM DEAD

waking up drenched in sweat
realizing it’s nothing but a nightmare
I get up to drink a glass of water
to drown the fear that woke me up!

sins I have done plenty
I do not know if the good I did is enough
to grant me a passage to heaven
or worse, born again as human;

never cared for what people thought,
never worried about those who left,
never a minute I spent crying over split milk,
what had to happen, had to happen!

what I was yesterday is what I am today,
yet people think I have changed, I wonder why!
I take life as it comes
no expectations and no demands!

with the guillotine waiting at every step,
uncertainty looms large over tomorrow,
I fear I need to live every moment
of today before I am dead!

Love buried

LOVE BURIED

His eyes in eclipse,

Pale-cold his lips,

The light of his hopes unfed,

Mute his tongue,

His bow unstrung

With the tears he hath shed,

Backward drooping his graceful head,

Love is dead:

His last arrow is sped

He hath not another dart;

Go–carry him to his dark deathbed;

Bury him in the cold, cold heart–

Love is dead.

O truest love! art thou forlorn,

And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles

Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?

Shall hollow-hearted apathy,

The cruellest form of perfect scorn,

With languor of most hateful smiles,

For ever write,

In the withered light

Of the tearless eye,

And epitaph that all may spy?

No! sooner she herself shall die.
For her the showers shall not fall,

Nor the round sun shine that shineth to all;

Her light shall into darkness change;

For her the green grass shall not spring,

Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,

Till Love have his full revenge.

saurav singh,B.A.(Hons.), J.N.U., new delhi