From the window
Vidyan Ravinthiran

I can see the gate creak open, and you enter
along the tip-tilted path plants on either side
sling rainy green across. That’s when you encounter
the big, inopportune, wet, pink, rose,
brushing it aside with a look that’s sad.
Seeing I don’t know what in your face,
I go halfway only – a thing unprecedented –
down the stairs, waiting on the latch,
you breathing hard… I can’t bear
it any longer – sprinting to surprise
you, I’m rebuffed. It’s as if you know
the secret of my pausing on the step,
my lonely fear of being brushed off
as your hand did that shining flower.

The child of Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants, Vidyan Ravinthiran grew up in a mixed area of Leeds and now teaches at Harvard. He's the author of two books of verse: The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here (2019) won a Northern Writers Award, was a PBS Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes. His study of Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic won both the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism. With Shash Trevett and Seni Seneviratne, he's currently editing an anthology of Sri Lankan poetry.

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From the window Vidyan Ravinthiran

From the window
Vidyan Ravinthiran