Modern Library

By Tanish Gupta

Make no move

For this here lies,

A delicate dance of a voiceless reverie;

As do eyes screen to screens

In plague-like silence,

To let out an allure;

Of high stands and fancy brands

To every eye with-out,

And draw in deep to this parable;

Here the soul returns

Here some noise melts,

And so here must come tomorrow’s day:

Inside comes not

As every blue shine of pixel,

Burns my lids to a sleepy wake;

My teeth clatter silent

Cautious to be unseen;

And whence I look past,

For a moment’s repast;

Every other face a sculpture

Fighting in delight,

To secure an illusion of higher choosing;

Amid a voiceless reverie

Is just a screaming,

Starving to say, to be let;

While barred in on itself

Can never speak of silent deaths,

So must wander away.

Deviant to this route there sings

A lane of promised histories

Where books that bore ink and blot,

And churned into themselves truthful wisdom;

And of such kind that

Assures life and bleeds feeling,

So foolish so personal

That innocence cries to its death;

But now let it die

For thinking drew away from it,

And love cannot save it;

Yet a museum it will be

For it is not rationale that remembers,

But something else.

By Tanish Gupta