You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
But your smile says you can relate,
Tell me what I should then do?
You bring me joy, I’m living anew,
I found love, and you want me to wait?
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
Knowing that you reciprocate,
Drunk on kisses, just see my state,
Tell me what I should then do?
This drunkenness, if only you knew,
Is a reason to live, yet, my mate,
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
You do not see my point of view,
You do not believe it’s a thing of fate,
Tell me what I should then do?
I hoard but one desire, that’s you,
But you insist I get over this state.
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
Tell me what I should then do?
But your smile says you can relate,
Tell me what I should then do?
You bring me joy, I’m living anew,
I found love, and you want me to wait?
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
Knowing that you reciprocate,
Drunk on kisses, just see my state,
Tell me what I should then do?
This drunkenness, if only you knew,
Is a reason to live, yet, my mate,
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
You do not see my point of view,
You do not believe it’s a thing of fate,
Tell me what I should then do?
I hoard but one desire, that’s you,
But you insist I get over this state.
You don’t want me to say, ‘I love you!’
Tell me what I should then do?
3 comments:
good!
Manisha, with much curiousity I've been browsing some Caferati-linked sites in the past day. Have not yet read a large volume of poems in them. But with that caveat, I can report that yours here are the first I've stumbled on (amid a congries of literary blogs) that strike me as "on the verge of superb." Or perhaps (with less equivocation), as quite good.
In recent years, I've also dabbled in the villanelle quite a bit (in one recent period, at times writing them more or less daily).
But (or so): to answer your question: yes, it is one.
The mix of heartbreak & wit, is perhaps what I like in the poems I'm seeing here; as well as a sense of language that, for one reason or another, sounds right to me.
best wishes,
d.i.
[obscure poet/painter/etc. in Washington, DC]
ps --
oops (as it were). Your poem's title (strangely enough) I misremembered as being "Is this a Villanelle?" Hence my (it must be) incomprehensible remark "To answer your question..." Whereas in fact your title itself exclaimed an answer to the imagined question my (short-term) memory had (mis)supplied in the first instance.
The discovery of which faux-pas seemed to necessitate recourse to an added annotation.
cheers withal,
d.i.
pps --
just noticed, I think you accidentally missed/dropped the intended rhyme scheme in this stanza:
| Knowing that you reciprocate,
| Drunk on kisses, just see my state,
| Tell me what I should then do?
(an easy formal goof we make at times when first getting into this form)
I'm sure it would be presumptuous to propose a specific rewrite. That said, I guess I'll take up the pen of presuption and sketch one idle possibility:
| What a dream our smooching drew!
| Drunk on kisses, look at my state,
| Tell me what I then should do?
-- note (while at it) -- perhaps this reflects some little nuanced difference between (my) American English & (your) Indian; but if I were writing this, I'd have the 3rd line as above, i.e.:
| Tell me what I then should do?
(thus reversing order of "then" and "should") -- the rhythm (to my ear & voice) goes more flowingly in this way, "I should then" seeming (on this side of the world-water at least) rather more strained & stilted, in an unnecessary way (given the other option. "Tell me what I then should do?" places emphasis on "then" -- accentuating a kind of (suitable, no?) "logical exasperation" -- a sense of being at wit's end.
(end of presumption alert)
cheers,
d.i.
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