a late-night song

Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Fire Wheel by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1875

“It is Death which consoles men, alas, and keeps them alive.”
— The Death of the Poor, Charles Baudelaire

when the discordant music of late-night
drops its deep-pitch
of sleep&numbness,

i speak to Death, sitting in her unavailing
darkness, filled with wreaths&dreams,
her crown shattered by the treachery
of man. singular and silent, she sits,

letting time discontinue itself
before settling in.

this night, i cannot see her.
knowing that she is, is enough.

.
© Anmol  Arora

Day 3
(Inter)National Poetry Month

Linking it up with Poems in April ~ Late night conversations with the muse at WRT

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in the wake of a life’s end

a kind of gloom sets in the body,
that you can feel lying underneath
your breath,

your words careful, so that they do not
harm the light, your silence loud
enough to make your presence known,

not to counter the void left behind
but to embellish it with your steps
as you move here and there, and
speak solemnly in the shimmer of
another pain that may always stay
within, like a story’s sudden end —

death always leaves one astounded,
even if it is writ in the sky, and on
our fingers, as we touch and hold
each other, we know it is there in
our very blood, and yet it shocks &
deprives us of our effort to under-
stand its proximity when it slithers
inside the room like a voice caught
from miles away to prick our ear,
and say what was not awaited but
known, visible just as the stars are,

until they disappear in a blank fog
and the eyes don’t want to see or
be seen any more.

© Anmol Arora

Something I wrote yesterday after we got to know of my uncle’s passing.

Image source (MOURNING CHANT OF A WHALE, 2014, by Hari Beierl)
Linking it up with the Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads