poems to remember from 2011 -Day 1

Less than two weeks to go in this year! While i have been busy haiku-ing and haiga-ing, work has been piling up. Dust has gathered on the window-sills, there are cobwebs high up on the ceiling and soon there are going to be a couple more faces across the table and clamour for a few more dishes or dessert. Time to step back for a while , take a few deep breaths and get busy with the broom. And as i go about setting the house in order, i think it might be a good idea to go back over and share with you some of the beautiful poetry i have read this year. Like, I bring you here two or three poems everyday throughout the remainder of this month. Most of them will be haiku, maybe some tanka, and a few might be even longer poems.Not all of them will have been written this year (though the majority will be), only those i have READ this year.Many of you will have read them before, but there is no harm in going over them yet again and maybe it could help you make up your mind about which poems to nominate for the Touchstone awards, because as i said, a majority will be from the various journals and blogs of this year!

So shall we begin today?

Let's say today's theme is "love" or "love gone wrong", whichever way you'd like to look at it.

I start with a haiku/senryu from 'Frogpond'., 34.3, 2011

pinwheeling leaves
thirty-five years end
with the word amicable


Dave Baldwin

Vikram Seth, by his own admission, has been considered sort of a 'literary untouchable' because he writes poetry in rhyme and metre. But that has been no problem for me at least, and the next

poem, a slightly longer one, is by him.

Unclaimed


To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test -


To lie and love,not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.


To touch,unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.


To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.


To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

Vikram Seth

And finally, another one from Frogpond, 34.3 :

And yet
deep in the dewdrop
you



Michele Root-Bernstein

Vikram Seth is a noted poet, novelist, travel writer and the winner of Crossword Book award in 1999.