English Poem | Silhouette | Aayush Shrestha

Attend, sweet soul, who wander’st through my rhyme,
For thou shalt meet the fairest ever born.
I pluck her likeness from the jaws of time,
And pen her here, both worshipped and forlorn.
No painter’s brush, no sculptor’s marble white
Could chisel forth her brow, her brow so wide,
Where thought and moonlight wed themselves each night
And stars in hushèd reverence abide.

Her eyes? Two wounds from which the sky did fall,
And in their depths the world forgets to turn.
Each glance she gave made kings and creatures crawl,
And hearts did leap as cities watched them burn.
She walks, and roses bloom where’er she treads—
Then perish quick, for shame of such compare.
The winds themselves would kneel to hold her threads,
And envy clouds that gather in her hair.

Yet I, a boy with naught but broken prose,
Did see her once, when fate was half-asleep.
She smiled—and lo!—my hollow spirit froze,
For joy too sharp can make the angels weep.
And so I wrote, with bleeding, trembling hand,
To trap her form within this fragile cage.
But words, like sand, do slip and not withstand
The tide of her—she walks beyond the page.

Now thou who read’st, I know what thou shalt feel:
Thy veins shall quicken, tears shall stain thine cheek.
Thou’lt beg the world to show her visage real,
To hear her laugh, to kiss her brow so meek.
Yet thou art cursed, as I have long been cursed—
For she is wind, and cannot be possessed.
And they who seek her fall from high to worst,
With madmen’s fire that will not let them rest.

Beware! For this, the poem thou dost clutch,
Is not mere ink—but longing’s haunted grave.
Each line a chain, each stanza thus a crutch,
For souls whom love, then loss, refused to save.
She never knew the ode I dared compose,
Or that the skies I begged would not obey.
She walks alone, while I—who held her close—
Am left to write, and die a verse each day.

English Poem | Aayush Shrestha