coming out of the frame,
in evening without a sun, unflinchingly,
he said, he was talking to his father
daily, in his mind, who was in grave,
(when he was on ventilator)
about a lesson of deception, about the things
evolved in endogamy,

cherubic, it seems, but there was water on the moon too,
in solitude, on gravel, under the rocks;
he kept on washing his hands for hours,
to remove the dirt and stigma, gathered on shaking
the lamps around the dark and then he started
collecting the flowers from the embroidery
of clouds

do not cry in the afternoon
SATISH VERMA