by Ajmer Rode
If you see an old man sitting alone
at the bus stop and wonder who he is
I can tell you.
He is my father.
He is not waiting for a bus or a friend
nor is he taking a brief rest before
resuming his walk.
He doesn’t intend to shop in the
nearby stores either
he is just sitting there on the bench.
Occasionally he smiles and talks.
No one listens.
No body is interested.
And he doesn’t seem to care
if someone listens or not.
A stream of cars, buses, and people
flows on the road.
A river of images, metaphors and
similes flows through his head.
When everything stops
at the traffic lights it is midnight
back in his village. Morning starts
when lights turn green.
When someone honks his neighbor’s
dog barks.
When a yellow car passes by
a thousand mustard flowers
bloom in his head.
A tall man passes with his shadow
vanishing behind him. My father
thinks of Pauli who left his village
for Malaya and
never came back. A smile appears
on his lips and disappears.
When nothing interesting seems to
happen he starts talking again:
where were you born, and where
have you come?
Shall you ever go back?
It is all destiny, yes a play of
destiny, you see.
He muses
and nods his head:
and where will you die my dear?
The thought of death is most
interesting and lingers on
He stops talking and thinks of the
Fraser Street chapel where he
has attended many funerals:
He thinks about the black
and red decorations and
imagines himself resting peacefully,
a line of people
passing by looking at him
for the last time.
His eyes are lit. Perhaps
this is the image he enjoys most
before it is demolished
with the rude arrival of a bus.
Passengers get down and
walk away briskly like ants.
The bus leaves.
He looks
at the traffic again to see
if a yellow car is passing by.
Poems At My Doorstep
Copyright ©:
Ajmer Rode
A few random poems:
- Илона Грошева – Ира
- Now That You’re Gone by Roberto Cocina
- Morning-Land by Siegfried Sassoon
- Our March by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Fragment of an Ode to Maia poem – John Keats poems
- Наум Коржавин – Неужели птицы пели
- A Defence Of English Spring poem – Alfred Austin
- The Valley Of Dry Bones poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Гавриил Державин – Философы, пьяный и трезвый
- Владимир Маяковский – Власть канцелярии – вот слова “бюрократия” перевод… (РОСТА №655)
- The Plunge poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Gareth And Lynette poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- human_charms.html
- The Callous Statues by Shahida Latif
- The Talking Oak poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- You Say You Love poem – John Keats poems
- Written In The Cottage Where Burns Was Born poem – John Keats poems
- Woman! When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain poem – John Keats poems
- What The Thrush Said. Lines From A Letter To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- Two Sonnets. To Haydon, With A Sonnet Written On Seeing The Elgin Marbles poem – John Keats poems
- Two Sonnets On Fame poem – John Keats poems
- Two Or Three poem – John Keats poems
- Translated From A Sonnet Of Ronsard poem – John Keats poems
- To The Ladies Who Saw Me Crowned poem – John Keats poems
- To Some Ladies poem – John Keats poems
- To George Felton Mathew poem – John Keats poems
- To Charles Cowden Clarke poem – John Keats poems
- The Gadfly poem – John Keats poems
- The Eve Of Saint Mark. A Fragment poem – John Keats poems
- The Devon Maid: Stanzas Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon poem – John Keats poems
- The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale — Unfinished poem – John Keats poems
- Teignmouth: “Some Doggerel,” Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon poem – John Keats poems
- Stanzas To Miss Wylie poem – John Keats poems
- Stanzas. In A Drear-Nighted December poem – John Keats poems
- Staffa poem – John Keats poems
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works