Here is the poem 'Photograph' which was published in Coldnoon Diaries last month. Along with the photograph it was written for. The photo has been clicked by my friend, Ritu Singh, in IP College, Delhi University. And, Happy New Year and all that!
Photograph
A photograph is a means of travel.
It is a way of defeating binary linear logics
Of space-time by jumping them. Flying
Through them. A Muggle way of apparating
A Muggle
Time-Turner. An apparition,
I apparate there, where the topmost branch
Meets the roof. I am a bird who lives in the tree.
(I wonder if you would like me if I was a bird in a
tree?
If you would shoot me with your lens instead of your
eyes)
Photography at least gives scope for the
imagination.
I am a bird right now, in this twilight dusk,
crooning
And chirping. Do you see me? Can you hear me?
I am right here, in this photograph. I am flying
now.
Tree friends, bird friends, rooftop friends, muggle
friends,
Present friends, past friends, and you, will you be
my friend?
I have been here for an hour now, this evening, this
tree,
This photograph, this place. This mist of memory and
dreams
Which films my eyes, this foggy lens of imagination.
This place
Looks so beautiful in a photograph. Is it so
beautiful, really?
I am trying to remember. I always thought that photography
Is a bourgeois art. I used to think it is a
voyeuristic art.
But it is also a way through which I am both bird
and human
Both there and here, both then and now, both in and
out
This photograph has set me free from factuality.
