Kapil Muni Tiwary- A Poem

Once upon a time

Once, once upon a time

You said I love you

So do I, I said.

You don't mean the same as I, you said.

How can you mean the same as I do?

Aber naturlich, you are you and I am I.

Then we lay side by side.

And then time stood by.

Then I was your subject

And you were my object.

Then you and I were each other's context,

Substitutable, synonymous, salve veritalis,

Then we laid pronominal, semantical, conundrums aside

And ourselves side by side.

Then you and I were syncretised 

Substitutable, synergistic, salve individualis.

Now I murmur sotte voce:

I love you,

I sing in tune:

I love you.

I scream aloud in agony;

I love you.

My heart on tiptoe strains to hear;

I love you too.

But hears instead the wind,

Lightly sighing in the trees.

Bio: Kapil Muni Tiwary did his MA and PhD in Linguistics from University of Pennsylvania and worked as professor of Linguistics and English Literature in India, Iraq and the Republic of Yemen. He has carried out research on languages like English, Bhojpuri, Hindi, Sanskrit and Arabic and several of his articles have been published in well known journals. These include The Echo-word Construction in Bhojpuri and Tuneful Weeping: A Mode of Communication. He is also the author of Panini's Description of Sanskrit Nominal Compounds and Language Deprivation and the Socially Disadvantaged: With special Reference to Bihar. At present he lives at Patna, India. Of late he has started using poetry as a mode of his expression.