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:
- Near But Far Away by William Morris
- Гавриил Державин – Ключ
- In the End by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Freddy by Stevie Smith
- Baile And Aillinn by William Butler Yeats
- To His Dead Body by Siegfried Sassoon
- He Has Lived In Many Houses by Thomas Lux
- Epigram on Parting with a kind Host in the Highlands by Robert Burns
- Seal
- Николай Карамзин – Часто здесь в юдоли мрачной
- On the Threshold poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sappho to Phaon (Ovid Heroid XV) poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet 55: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments by William Shakespeare
- Love Sonnet XLIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- In Sutton Woods poem – Alfred Austin
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
- Алишер Навои – О сердце, столько на земле
- Алишер Навои – О, мне бы крылья
- Алишер Навои – Нет, не от слез кровавых одежда моя красней
- Алишер Навои – Не в камфарной ли одежде этот кипарис прямой
- Алишер Навои – Над головой моею осенних дней листопад
- Алишер Навои – На лице горит созвездье у красавицы моей
- Алишер Навои – Моя безумная душа в обломках
- Алишер Навои – Луна в носилках, о постой
- Алишер Навои – Кто на стезе любви един
- Алишер Навои – Когда, тоскуя по тебе
- Алишер Навои – Кипарис подобен розе увлажненной
- Алишер Навои – Как от вздохов безнадежных дым
- Алишер Навои – Эти губы точно розы
- Алишер Навои – Если б был я быстрым ветром
- Алишер Навои – Двух резвых своих газелей, которые нежно спят
- Алишер Навои – Цветком, что счастье нам несет
- Алишер Навои – Чудесные свершения середины жизни
- Алишер Навои – Чаша, солнце отражая
- Альфред Теннисон – Волшебница Шалот
- Альфред Теннисон – В долине
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