Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is a former Computer professional turned bilingual poet and writer from Singapore. She is a Pushcart nominee (Shot Glass Journal) and her poems have been featured in various anthologies and journals across Singapore, USA, India, and Japan. Some of her poems have been translated into Japanese, Chinese Art and Spanish.

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

---

 

War Ghazal

(a ghazal)

When did days of February melt into fiery heaps, my love?
Firing guns, armoured vehicles, cannot erase my love.

In the quiver of dusk, the ash of your warm skin, unwrapped.
Silhouettes of steel remnants, cannot displace my love.

Clatter of teacups, plaid jackets, silver on mantlepiece,
walks along the Dnieper cannot retrace my love.

Soft longing of the nightingale, echoes roadmaps of sorrow,
pounding veins, empty arms cannot embrace my love.

Look, little toes stubbed themselves blue, where were you?
Last night he wore your shoe, I cannot enlace my love.

Every sliver of the moon knots heartstrings, limp, cold.
Odes and plaques of engraving cannot replace my love.

Wreaths of pastoral autumn gnaw and numb yet again,
splinters of horror, inferno of terror, cannot encase my love.

Weary One, step into sublime peace of yesteryears,
until we meet again, under the grace of our true love.