The bird, I imagine,
asks how long the bard’ll
go on scrivening
about those stolen kisses he missed
as a young man.

From the street beneath
my verandah, a vagrant
upturns his palms. Money?
No, he shows his scald.
Time has touched
both the fire and the frost;
does the man feel
the veins swelled with the pride
for his battle marks?

Almost spring, the bipolar wind
inoculates two minds
I think with, and I think about
the bird of the morning
and the man without a home,
and those two minds fight
against the starry starry night
and chasing crows inside.

Time feeds two serpents.
Some rumours of the summer
lures you to open the curtains.
A flyer flies in. Don’t pick up.
I scream. We didn’t discover
any vaccine for belief.

– Kushal Poddar