Arvind Srivastava

God has rejected your silence
He cannot see any destiny fading
The moon will be close to the earth in March and April
He has rejected this hope too
...

I am the one who mends broken shoes
I have also mended thousands of hearts

I am the nightingale sitting on a stump of a crematorium
...

I brighten those memories
Which have been discolored by time
I repair an image that is falling apart
A feeling that had shattered like glass
...

Your love is in my veins
Look how similar your red blood cells are to my blood
They are the same breaths that are moving here and there
We both are soaked in the same life-scent
...

A tired sigh remains between us
An ant-like feeling crawling on the body
Step by step a sad evening
An old freighter moving slowly on the chest of the sea
...

Intellectuals searched my head
Critics shook my body
Activists pulled my hair
Poet friends laughed
...

How can I wait..

When there is not a single penny in my pocket
...

The dictator listens
In the roar of tanks
The melody of music
Refreshes his lungs
...

..as if
time had wandered in pitch darkness
as if a squirrel
had been caught by a hunting dog
...

In love

Many wrote letters with blood
...

A poet from a village, town or district

undertakes a long journey to meet a metropolitan poet
...

Some things do not become part of folklore, legend or rumour
All things on earth work in turns
Like all the letters of a type-machine do not come on paper at the same time
Like we cannot see all the scenes of a play at once
...

The king is sad

His daughter
...

The birds were talking

That our pleasant days of laughter and happiness
...

Butterflies were yet to communicate with flowers

The balloons were yet to be filled with air
...

It was standing right here for a million years
on the body of the ocean
silently watching us
...

Even in the bad times of long-term dreams
I did not let the cup of love overflow
A pearl inside an oyster
Kept waiting on the shore for centuries
...

▪️ अरविन्द श्रीवास्तव

नहीं लगती कौवे की पंचायत
बिजली के तारों पर
...

राइफलें
जो किसी पत्ते की खड़खड़ाहट
कि दिशा में
तड़तड़ा उठी थीं
...

Rifles
the rustling of a leaf
in that direction
had woken up furiously
...