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.
Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour
The war is over.
The builders come:
they build doors with archways; the ceilings are high
Drones out brittle, weary invocations, the certainty
of fruit now distant as the first word
On God’s tongue. Such disarray. So much leaf-rot,
Noise is relative, too, like space
and time. For fish, who live packed
in water, the massive crash of a leaf
My head emerging from this paper box—
not heavy but sufficiently opaque
and put there up across my balding pate
Everyone has advice, lots of suggestions,
Some bring him plastic bowls, tin cans,
Old buckets; someone with half a degree
No definition tells you rooms exist:
touch them too hard, too long, and like mimosa
they close against a stem so sightless green
Our ancient lives enhanced their lively wit
We hissed the cave shut with an angry spyt
The hills will stagger down the mountain’s rind.
He thinks of iced tea, free in the South
after one glass (he would drink a gallon).
Tea iced was introduced in Chicago
That which rings and spins, that which is broken
and between, lingers behind the curtain. We were
a family business: My father, top and tails, sawing