I remember every summer
when the sun was impossibly mine,
I owned it to the point that the flowers
took permission from me to seek its warmth.
Every fibre of mine arched to a liquid exuberance,
a stark pain when everything made sense,
and nothing did.
I could have given a lifetime for that time,
in the water, on the grass, in twilight-dimmed paths,
when time condescended to let us be,
and the hours rested beside the fences where
we sat and found ourselves out.
I remember the electricity of the brush of a finger,
and the nights when I found dreams
woven around that touch,
and how the pain of the body when I was young
was the sweetest damnation which life could ever find.
We reflected each other's bodies in each drop
of our sweat, and when we kissed, we found the
sweetness of every summer fruit on each other's
lips. And even as we found the shadows of our bodies
beckoning to us, with promises of eternity,
we knew the play of seasons,
and the brief interlude of the sun in our lives.
We had wept together for the immeasurable
which we had found inside of each other,
and why we were the life: alas,
living was ordained for elsewhere.
Of course, we raved, and of course we cried,
but even as we parted, we knew we would never
ever find that time again
when we spent our longest hours,
but in the shortest summer of our lives.
Based on the film “Call Me by Your Name”
Sunil Bhandari is a poet by compulsion. He says he survives in this world because he can get to write poetry. He says he does all this for his soul; for his body he manages finance of a large conglomerate.
He has written the Amazon bestseller book of poetry "of love and other abandonments ". His latest book is "Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost".
His poetry has appeared in several poetry compilations, some of them being Cologne of Heritage; Discarded; The DLF Anthology of Poems; Poerty; Plethora Blogazine (now Chrysanthemum Chronicles); Verse of Silence; Hibiscus; Freedom Raga 2020; Jallianwala Bagh: Poetic Tributes; A Letter, A Poem, A Home: the Airplane Poetry Movement Collection, etc.
He is a popular poet in the Calcutta circle of poets and has been an invited poet in Apeejay Kolkata Lit Fest, Delhi Poetry Festival and Valley of Words Fest in Dehra Dun.
His poetry podcast “Uncut Poetry” is already a hit and heard in almost 60 countries!