Devika Brendon: ‘High Requiem’ and ‘Omega’

High Requiem

The joy is not in the having, but the desiring.

The country I grew up in
has been cut off from me, and I from it
By pandemic and policy and cost and distance: a three-year malaise, a delayed exit.
Its serrated realities blurred in a haze.
It seems perfect, to my longing gaze.

My friends’ irritations seem mild to me
And their sources of discontent
a mystery.
Here, on the edge of my second sight:
They seem to inhabit
An island of white sand
And turquoise water,
Saturated with light.

And there they are,
As I am to them, too,
Just on the outer edges of what we know—
A stone’s throw.

Devika Brendon

Omega

Time did not stop, when his heart stopped, on Solstice Day.
Time went on, and not in a stop/start way.
Like a stream in the highlands, pure and cold.
Like age comes upon us, turning us old.

He left everything clear cut, and filed.
Wisdom is inherited, along with title deeds;
and faith is invested, and yields dividends.
We have time to consider each wish, and…