Poem of the Day
Yellow Striped Pajamas
By Shamsher Bahadur Singh
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
That's true. Often the only amusing thing in a graveyard
will be the Jewish names.
There they are, in the full sight of everyone, winking from
Stumbling midnight tipsy in Jackson's studio,
who knocked black paint over into tomorrow
and throbbing rainbows of our morning after?
“Feel me to do right,” your father whispered
to you out of the blue of two silences:
his shyness, his dying. How beautifully
come in every size and shape,
wiry and weighty,
jogging and mincing, plodding and sprinting,
“What I am is not important, whether I live or die —
It is the same for me, the same for you.
What we do is important. This is what I have learnt.
Aiee, father of mine, father of mine,
What are these shouts in the rain, these voices in the air?
The petal is ripped from the flower, the branch from the tree.
Better give me something to smoke
If I'm going to love you, better
"A god can do it"—yes. But a girl?
The Greeks named it hubris,
As if she had a choice: this is all
The lovers lie in trouble in the park.
The cold fall draws the leaves to earth around them.
Good angels of these lovers, come, surround them,
They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,
Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm.
They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said,