Across these miles I wish you well.
May nothing haunt your heart but sleep.
May you not sense what I don’t tell.
May you not dream, or doubt, or weep.
May what my pen this peaceless day
Writes on this page not reach your view
Till its deferred print lets you say
It speaks to someone else than you.
Time Zones | Vikram Seth
I willed my love to dream of me last night, that we might lie
at peace, if not beneath a single sheet, under one sky.
I dreamed of her but she could not alas humour my will;
it struck me suddenly that where she was was daylight still.
A Style of Loving | Vikram Seth
Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground
As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive.
We two
Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsummated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head
Hot buttered rum — coffee for you;
And so not to bed.
And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon’s
High joy or pain.
Protocols | Vikram Seth
What can I say to you? How can I retract
All that that fool my voice has spoken_
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
The protocols of friendship broken?
I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn
And hold you in its warmth and keeping.
All You Who Sleep Tonight | Vikram Seth
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right,
And emptiness above–
Know that you aren’t alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
From The Golden Gate | Vikram Seth
He goes home, seeking consolation
Among old Beatles and Pink Floyd –
But ‘Girl’ elicits mere frustration,
While ‘Money’ leaves him more annoyed.
Alas, he hungers less for money
Than for a fleeting Taste of Honey.
Murmuring, ‘Money – it’s a gas! …
The lunatic is on the grass,’
He pours himself a beer. Desires
And reminiscenes intrude
Upon his unpropitious mood
Until he feels that he requires
A one-way Ticket to Ride – and soon –
Across the Dark Side of the Moon.
Song of a Second April | Edna St. Vincent Millay
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
From orchards near and far away
The gray wood-pecker taps and bores,
And men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep;
Noisy and swift the small brooks run.
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun
Pensively; only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.
Sonnet cxxix | When did I ever deny, though this was fleeting | Edna St. Vincent Millay
When did I ever deny, though this was fleeting,
That this was love? When did I ever, I say,
With iron thumbs put out the eyes of the day
In this cold world where charity lies bleating
Under a thorn, and none to give him greeting,
And all that lights endeavour on its way
Is the teased lamp of loving, the torn ray
Of the least kind, the most clandestine meeting?
As God’s my judge, I do cry holy, holy,
Upon the name of love however brief,
For want of whose ill-trimmed, aspiring wick
More days than oe i have gone forward slowly
In utter dark, scuffling the drifted leaf,
Tapping the road before me with a stick.
Sonnet cxxxix | I must not die of pity; I must live | Edna St. Vincent Millay
I must not die of pity; I must live;
Grow strong. not sicken; eat, digest my food,
That it may build me, and in doing good
To blood and bone, broaden the sensitive
Fastidious pale perception: we contrive
Lean comfort for the starving, who intrude
Upon them with our pots of pity; brewed
From stronger meat must be the broth we give.
Blue, bright September day, with here and there
On the green hills a maple turning red,
And white clouds racing in the windy air!-
If I would help the weak, I must be fed
In wit and purpose, pour away despair
And rinse the cup, eat happiness like bread.
Sonnet cxviii | There is a well into whose bottomless eye | Edna St. Vincent Millay
There is a well into whose bottomless eye,
Though I were flayed, I dare not lean and look,
Sweet once with mountain water, now gone dry,
Miraculously abandoned by the brook
Wherewith for years miraculously fed
It kept a constant level cold and bright,
Though summer parched the rivers in their bed;
Withdrawn these waters, vanished overnight.
There is a word I dare not speak again,
A face I never again must call to mind;
I was not craven ever nor blenched at pain,
But pain to such a degree and of such kind
As I must suffer if I think of you,
Not in my senses will I undergo.
Juvenilia 