Ode to the Monday Rain

Today, if I were to rush,

it would only be till

the window...

To strain for berries, 

and then to catch 

the tones I missed

in the song that's on loop

since morning.

After all, it is Monday, 

a Sabbath for poets.

Monday rains are shy,

selfless creatures of creation;

they talk in whispers,

sing in sighs; 

leave us with introverts two,

a background score 

that loses to the blues

in our playlists;

the mist, gentle and subdued, 

who stays backstage. Always.

If the cold drops were smokers,

or had warm breath like

the kids of Democracy,

they could leave

symbols on my pane.

Footnotes on the music,

their sense, the belonging,

and who bears the bill

for their concert;

I see an empty hall.

-- Leslie Xavier

A Rainy Day

There,

above those tall, old trees,

and beyond reckoning,

you will find resolution,

answers to those equations 

with aspirations of grandeur.

​The myth sings,

there is a cloud over there, 

born with you, for you.

It keeps your due,

some dew, a poem

and a bit more rain drops.

Those drops you will need,

you would crave,

and chase in uneven spurts,

with ironed out emotions,

for you are seeking solace 

to wash it all off when it matters least.

My cloud hovers there, I see,
and it rains here this morning.

-- Leslie Xavier

Delhi and a Democratic Irony

I seek the obvious,

the irony of a 

monsoon morning,

as I leave the lawns

down south,

to the loan sharks

high up on a steep

pecking order.

I seek salvation

among humid, smiling faces,

even as a storm brews, 

in and around

Lutyens' reminders of slavery,

a few signage bright and yellow,

which herald sunrise, sunset,

and democratic bonded labour.​

Ode to the monsoon wind

The moist wind,

laden with words

for a memoir,

reaches me through

the long corridor
that begins at Connaught Place,

stretches onto adulthood

at the cubicle end of KG Marg.

One, two, too many

man hours later,

the dusty opaque spectacles

give way for a greener tint.

It's monsoon outside,

winter in here.​