Fog

Notes in thinking

A.J.Rao

1

Mrs.Moore and the wasp and I

Pretty little thing, said Mrs.Moore who was alone with it in her roomand its brown buzz was plainsong.

This one flew in my room yesterday. I feared the poor thing mightsting and stop being poetry for ever.

(referring to Mrs.Moore’s encounter with the wasp in E.M.Forster’sA Passage to India)

Post Script

After I had done a poem about the wasp, its mud house surfaced onmy desk. My veneered computer table might have been mistakenfor tree wood.

The mud house ,tightly glued to the table’s laminate ,had to bescraped off. But the way tiny future wasps inside squiggled, thereseemed no end of wasp poems.

2

Space

Here is a space looking to be filled while this world is cut off for now.A few headlights are found on a transit road ,a refugee washedashore on beach, baby who kissed beach head down.

My space will be filled by the poem what it all means for aspace to unfill , a death on the future side of a pancreas, amemory dead from a laughing face .

We make poems of space we lose.

3

From my balcony

The sun climbs a neighbor’s coconut , time for a long dialogue ofwalk .Everything is so clear and so well cut.A neighbor ‘s tinymoonlight flowers had done a night’s duty of fragrance.They arewithered smiles on the road.

The parijata tree had shed its flowers on the earth , their feet up inthe air.The feet are so red , so fallen to the sky.

Sister cuckoo is shrieking for her rain in Ashoka tree, with noidea of a sky hosting no clouds from Arabian sea.Her shrieksare a despair of farmers who hang cotton dreams on trees.

4

Book shelf

My bookshelf has turned old and gray, a steel – glass self ofsee-through age holding my old books to read nothing,just a smile,a memory of old smells,while silver fish swim in their spines .

If I put it up for sale in used market,from sleep’s darkness I willwake up to find a black hole in room without its soft grayassurance of thinginess, smelling like mom’s belly in darkness.

5

Smile

We say selfies are serious business at 66 and a beyond , son ofShiva. You stretch your space sine die beyond your elbow andstick.You are playing to a dark audience.

Be aware, average man is around just two years older than thisage.Not much to smile about or under an undyedmouch,however ffunny.Average man just laughs in mirror.Hefinds his comic self hung there,a poet’s tattered coat upon astick.(Yeats)

6

Stone

Walking behind was death’s shadow, a hit with no run, a knock on ahead,a shadow that had no original being.A hospital monitor is nowtelevision to brain ticking in tubes to her body.

She who had mothered our new year was a friend amidstexquisite stones and she is now a stone behind bone froze intime like the stone maidens that danced for ever on templewalls.

7

Birthday

We are primarily tuned to a new birthday of a child of longyears,seeking its growth to a world of awareness, strings not pulledhorizons not yet explored, walls not climbed, he that is inured to theloneliness of night.

The child’s own melancholy had returned sweaty in fear and flight ,apanic in attack years ago,when a grand mom of stories went awaycasually to the outer darkness of fears and the mind went in searchof a body lost.

We now have our newer stories to recount.Our stories shall bewithout old melancholy with newer grand moms still in themaking their stories with new hopes yet formulating.

8

Vanish

Mom’s guru had vanished behind a custom warehouse,her mantraleft in mom’s ears above waters.Disciple has since entered soul ofmango tree whose leaves are fluttering like birds in mild wind.

Wind must be fluttering mantra left behind in my mother’s earsnow operating below the waters.

9

Brown car

In short knickerbockers I would run away from the court wall’sdarkness.The car came from dust of darkness.It would soon attainlight to highway.

The car brought my people from dad.They were strangers againstmy mom,who wore a familiar dust on her face and my knicker legswore small dust.

Dad was dream from my small sleep.But they were real folks of daddream.They were flesh then but now in dust.Dad had turned to dustlong long ago.

I keep counting my folks to their dust ,the brown car that hadbrought them from out of highway’s nocturnal dust in dream,readying to join all this dust.

10

Sixty in infinity

We write poems when our women turn sixty, like how we write themabout small -big things ,the thread that passes binding us to aninfinity- little things that make their poetry and mine on the edges ofthe night.

Sixty is a milestone in the vastness of infinity that stretchesbefore me and them.

11

Prose from poems

We will stop to write poems when no longer close-ended.We willthen switch to prose as we will turn old and gray in a wispy beard,eyes hoary somewhat of a brokenglass.

Broken glass is a watery view a form that distorts the worldturns it to an unending prose ,a poet’s openending estuary intothe high seas of oblivion.

12

Rath Yatra

It would rain on this chariot day and gods went out yearlyriding.Their wood is the nature of things the very jungle from wherewe had come,from our ancestors.

Their chariot will roll on our lives the way towards ancientdreams.We love to die under its wheels we had lovingly made all ofrain from jungle wood recently dead.We shall some day burn aswood,our ashes lighted by their smiles.

13

Pure View

The pure view envelops the light within weaving darkness aroundcore of being.Leaf around leaf promises a deep flower nestled incontrast, a fierce independence untrammeled by a reality check ofcolor.

The color is moss green away from pink.Pink is leaf around leaf,petal after petal.The pink reinforces a forced moss-green of leavesmimicking tiny ground leaves of slippery earth surfaces , rainedwalls.

Men are daubed in pink, women in russet.Sun turns blushingred, a bleeding shame.The trees soar leaf after leaf, to a bluesky.The sky turns pure view, cloud after cloud.Pure view isnature brazenly imitating art.

( Taking pictures from Nokia Pure View 41 MP camera phone ispure joy , an act of willing suspension of disbelief)

14

Making faces

Our alphabet is trying to fix a face beyond reality of a commonseeing, a knowledge that is a state of blur.

This boy in yellow knowlege robes makes faces at our cumulatedfolly as we are giving alphabet to baby.

His pantomimic face riles our folly the way he distorts reality ofbaby,the way he debunks all knowledge.

(At a ceremony of giving alphabet to the baby at the temple ofSaraswati, the Goddess of Learning at Varagal)

15

A stroke of luck

A sweet , not enough married, woman now majorly spinsterish all byherself has now her lips sealed to any nature.

What stroke of luck,we say, her life and limb are not stitched tobathroom and bed.Trust her luck to keep her hands free.

We old men still have our hands free and while we are at it ourpoems flow and by a stroke of luck we have lips free.

16

Those are pearls

Rilke’s father had no moustache .The brows touch and in the eyes adream.By a poet who looked for dreams in vintage photographcreatures.

Like Ariel spirit who sang for you to disappear and be gone for eversinging of pearls that were eyes of dreams that made his pearls fivethousand rupees for a string in the pearl bazar of four towers,farfrom oyster hosting oceans.

We are looking for dream fathers without a moustache, theirbrows not touching, as knit in thoughts from a far off space,soft to touch like pearls solidified from dreams found in oldphotograph creatures.

17

The rich wood of Adrienne

The poet’s wood is not all that dead .Poet is recently but woodremains .But its map is gone from 2012 on.

Wood is tree dead but just once dead and can’t surely die again andagain.Wood shall not die ,only map by poet as she would type herworld in map.

A world is gone but the wood stays because it is dead anddreamwood. A dream dreamed can’t die in wood.Old maps arestill out there frayed and folded, maps she once walked.

( a homage to poet Adrienne Rich on her passing)

18

Forgottenness

Speaking we do, to forget and erase,the hotel eats a food for ourthought right up to the chandelier in bloom,a memory that is lost offorgot moms.

Our years come back in the thought like Christmas snow, beardedmen in each year’s pretending differently,the festivity in hearts somefine ice.

Let us now have a clink of ice back,drink to the health of thedeceased,spread flaked rice outside a hearse,as we freeze themoment in a page of forgottenness torn from memory.

19

Mango pickles

We have passed many mango seasons. We are still mango in treeand cuckoo, the latter shouting for west hills rain.

We can pelt no stones at mangoes now but can eat stones off theirsweet pulp.Our eaten stones sprout tender leaves from stinkinggarbage dumps ,homes to pigs.When they grow big they hostcuckoos ,their branches rub each other in love.

Our mom is now mango to the breeze.She can make no moremango pickles but hosts mango tasting cuckoo music.

20

Heat wave

The heat came all the way from hills touching the bushes with thelizards in torpor , stomachs dazed like stone.The birds slept theirsummertime siesta.

Waters everywhere wore warm heart,with love as waves tooverwhelm us and choke our bodies with tiny vapor sucked fromlimited bogs and ponds.

The sea stopped growling at midnight and sending soft feelersto an inland to fill its loveless vacuums to its sky and bringdown waves of rain from it.

21

It is a bird

No one knew hud hud would come by the sea, from Northernislands,a floating hoopoe,with a wing span that covered our blackmountains.

Our dolphin here turns up its nose against looming ships inhigh seas.It is our black mountain with nose.It could not stopthe big black bird from entering our huts at midnight.

(Cyclone hud hud this year caused untold destruction to the port cityof Visakhapatnam and to numerous hamlets of local fishermen onthe Andhra coast)

22

Contrails

We went outside ,so we kids could flap our fingers at the contrailsafter jets that came smoothly flowing like water under feet,surprising us behind trees.The birds took no notice nor their trees.

They were not a pilot’s smoking trails and the sound seemedaudibly missing like the lagged sounds of the thunder and we wouldwait for it not to come because there was no fun in the sound whenthere would be no light streaks.

They were the trails of silent sky-jets that stretched likemonkey god’s tails.They laid luminous paths and our eyesshone with excitement in our finger nails ready for a little whitefluff to sky-drop to lodge behind them , like tiny pearls thatwould enter our fingers fluttering at flamingos flying here onyearly holiday from their frozen Siberian back homes.

23

Mum is the word ( for mango)

We have passed many mango seasons. We are still mango in treeand cuckoo, the latter shouting for west hills rain.We can pelt nostones at mangoes now but can eat stones off their sweet pulp.Oureaten stones sprout tender leaves from stinking garbages homes topigs. When they grow big they host cuckoos .Their branches will rubeach other in love.

Our mom is now mango to the breeze. She can make no moremango pickles but hosts mango tasting cuckoo music.

24

Girl turns woman

The closed window is struck by voices that come flying from thebasement,a choral celebration of womanhood.They will not breakmy glass panes like street-side boys cricket but coagulate on themlike rain moths hitting to gain an entry to light , only to die on wings.

The voices flow from a jointly vibrating drum-skin like thestrident tom tom announcing a new girl-woman thing.Theystrike like midnight jackal wails with joint complaints againstthe moon.They sound you about a flower arrival in the grasswaiting to be discovered.

25

Berry them

On the hills the berries would appear.Time for you kids to bleedyour palms.They were yesterday’s moon-flowers their milk spillinglike soft moonlight lightly sour but fragrance to memory.

Beware, terror thorns bleed for real.Let it be cold blood in your rat’steeth,not on your pudgy schoolboy fingers with the telltalehomework ink stains.

The sun may slip and fall off the edge, he who had filled all thispurple pride.Hurry to bleed pockets but not shins.

26

Walk

I walk these streets in water maps ,rice powder designs , dogs lyingin knots , girls with sleep in eyes,tooothpastes dribbling in mouthsmoms violently wake up to school.

I walk them and my metaphors fly as obscure words , as fears inbelly,connections discovered , decisions to be reversed on reachinghome.

Dogs in knots have now to get up walking slowly to the other corner.They go back to sleep in new knots their dreams intact,sleepresumed.

Shadows walk on hills to be lifted as soon as clouds pass andeagle.The clouds then walk on our roofs and trees dancing toautumn wind.

27

Pure view

The pure view envelops the light within leaving darkness aroundcore of being.Leaf around leaf promises a deep flower nestled incontrast, a fierce independence untrammeled by a reality check ofcolor.

The color is moss green away from pink. Pink is leaf around leaf,petal after petal.The pink reinforces a forced moss-green of leavesmimicking tiny ground leaves of slippery earth surfaces , rainedwalls.

Men are daubed in pink, women in russet. Sun turns blushingred, a bleeding shame.The trees soar leaf after leaf, to a bluesky.The sky turns pure view, cloud after cloud.Pure view isnature brazenly imitating art.

( Taking pictures from Nokia Pure View 41 MP camera phone ispure joy , an act of willing suspension of disbelief)

28

Fingers

With dad away on long leave uncle officiates in ceremonies.Withuncle away nephews wait for the big trip up and yonder.Now theyperform ceremonies expertly in waiting anterooms ,keep little fingersin abeyance.

Where dad lives is freezing cold .Uncle fingers are froze theretoo.Soon nephew fingers join them.So all fingers will jointlyfreeze.

29

The silver mountain

The silver mountain disclosed answers to a meditating saint in itsdeep recess now sky blue with priests interceding for us on behalfof a phallic stone god.

Then were no blue – red painted pillars enclosing people bathingphallus gods with smooth gluey banana milk paste, just a saint andhis god in banyan trees sprouting from silver recesses for wind.

The saint would look for beauty in jungle and in silver mountains, onhis cross-legs blinded by a gold of sun , a child’s doubts ,a flicker inthe mind like a child’s smile.

We search beauty in blue stone pillars climbing kitschy colorsengulfing men.Their beauty flows in white gluey paste aroundphallus gods in silver mountain.The mountain is no more silverbut blue with white clouds about it as gluey paste.

(On a visit to the Siddhulagutta temple in Hyderabad)

30

Red dust

The mountains bled every time in the throats, for lucre stashedbelow lungis tucked at waists ,our faces ugly in dusty greed.Moneywould turn their blood to fine dust layering our roads.

Our trucks left their tire treads in fine dust layers on the roads all theway to green sea, where ships went blue in containers for yellowmen of other shore.

The red dust covered the trees and roads and walking peopleall the way to an invisible sky.Our earth is now a red planet atthe other shore of our space.

(Large scale iron ore mining for export has left our mountains totallydevastated in parts of South India)

31

Mysteries

Whether it is pecking at the bathroom glass all the time or onlywhen I go there is my mystery.What is the mystery in the sparrow’smind about the bathroom visitors , their bodies wet in the knowledgeof a pecking sparrow? A sparrow tirelessly pecking at own reflectionis a mystery , set against futility of its effort.How the bird can bestupid enough to peck against own reflection, ignoring past failuresis a mystery that overwhelms bathing bodies.

I cannot look in its eyes ,set too high and tiny, only sense a lightsquirm in its body as I enter.Overwhelmed by no mystery it squirmslightly which is the same each time I enter its space.

The quest for mysteries is mine, not sparrow’s.

32

Sixty and infinity

After we write poems about a stool and a crow, love and itsremorse, we go on to Lord god with prayer, a blue god with butter inmouth the very God who lifted mountain for cows against heaven’sanger, who spread camphor and love to an antline of people in thehills.

Why not write poems when women turn sixty, like how we writethem about small -big things ,the thread that passes binding usto infinity, little things that make their poetry and mine on theedges of a night. Sixty is milestone in the breathlessness of aninfinity that stretches before us.

33

Simulacrum

In a rhythm, please speak up now with us as rain- moths are pullingout their music from puffed up cheeks and painted hearts .Thecuckoo sings a rain song from a gnarl. Its rhythm will go on tillmorning and sun.

Crack a burst sound from the almond shell of morning hid in kernelon night’s branches the tip of a tongue testifying its early rising.Theadrenaline had wildly gone up the night.

Girls, hold your skirts and swirl like earth-ball to kick the blueof the airy balloon to a yellow sun .The sun has tied his horsesto swirl around it .It will now be your fate to move insimulacrum.

“The sun has tied Earth and other planets through attraction andmoves them around itself as if a trainer moves newly trained horsesaround itself holding their reins.” Rigveda

34

Buddha in our lake

Buddha has stood in the middle of our path away from ourcleverness and a swirling boat a felicity of word, a beauty of image,a thing.In the green waters he had waited for us men to lift concretegoodness and politician’s fame of an actor petrified in the histrionicsof time.

Buddha stands in his stone pleats in the lake. His dazzlingsmile of a middle path beckons us from our own concreteholes, to a golden dusk that glorifies the lake, with all its dirtycontents flowing from our shames in our concrete holes.

(we have a magnificent monolithic Buddha standing in the center ofour city’s lake,Hussainsagar)

35

Chair

At our wedding, chair was a basket for carrying by uncles andbrothers.We sat prim on feet drawn up shyly.We were so queen inindulgences.

Now we wear chair on our bottom for carry by uniformed airlinestaff so we could fly in the flying womb just as we did in mom’sfirst waters.We have enjoyed this chair always but stupid bumhad always vertigo.

36

Branches

She has branched off our big branch our own child, drinking thesame sap and her leaves shall fall as if our own on an autumnearth, from the branch.

My own blood relatives keep flowing along with hers streaming inmy flow.This baby is her branch but mine too in the branch,branching off my own.

She is the same branch, as the man in the shirt-sleeves staringin space unremittingly from my whitest wall from among dozenheads stopping to say nothing, branching their own.

37

Watchman

Watchman is ticking life. Watchman is drunk bird. His chicks eat hisbreath.A watchman’s bird will go like all birds from nests in breath orfrom breath.He is now room with bird. Without , he will be space likebird without the nest.

Everyone’s room is mine.When my own bird goes he and I aresame space.

38

Matchboxes

Women stand to fill their emptiness with fire-sticks , not sit down tillevening so they quickly run away in case of fire.Matchboxes areempty like old houses in Norway of chopped wood’s smelling lettersof note written about by poets on papers of pulp ,like Norwayhouses.

Match boxes are like tiny empty houses such that you roam aboutfreely in them to experience wind between their walls throughabsence of furniture, for minds to wander away from them to thehills to know where the wind has come from or where the fireresides at stick-heads women run away from while standing.

( on a visit to the matchbox factories of Sivakasi)

39

Taking a tail home

Bringing home was what I had thought instantly of a just opened skyof birds froze in v formations ,on the east side buildings, where girlis walking jauntily.

Sun water I shall mix with trees and girl and bird in the swamppecking at plastic bag flying in water hyacinth stuck to it helplesslyfrom actually flying away to other hyacinth-ed waters of lazingducks.

I thought of the stray dog wagging tail on the edge of the lakeat the rising sun but could not possibly take his tailhome.Pockets were too full with other things.

40

Our Siberian friends

We went outside ,so we kids could flap our fingers at the contrailsafter jets that came smoothly flowing like water under feet,surprising us behind trees.The birds took no notice nor their trees.

They were not a pilot’s smoking trails and the sound seemedaudibly missing like the lagged sounds of the thunder and we wouldwait for it not to come because there was no fun in the sound whenthere would be no light streaks.They were the trails of silent sky-jetsthat stretched like monkey god’s tails.They laid luminous paths andour eyes shone with excitement.

Our finger nails were getting ready for a little white fluff tosky-drop to lodge behind them , tiny pearls that would enterour fingers fluttering at flamingos flying in on yearly holidayfrom their frozen Siberian back homes.We were disappointedthat our Siberian friends had not yet arrived.

41

Fog in the throat

At times there is death’s browning,an experience of the fog in throat,a chemical stirred by a stray dog smelling our death in casual walk.

The dog is sniffing his own death barking head off on our intrusionat a death walking in on two legs, trying to fight a fog in his throat.

(Reference is to Robert Browning’s poem Prospice)

42

Radio child

As everyone knows ,everyone has inside cliches and closelyworking with them, in beauty routine.Every child knows to keepcompany with the old.Those are little things one has kept in olddrawers.

Every tea cup is inside cliche, qualifies for poem.Especially if thereis no tea,drunk before poem.Green leaves are no dregs formingstrange birds.Dregs are Darjeeling tea residues left after train.Trainis what reaches the edge into a sky of tea.

Dregs are left if a retard climbs lover’s deathbed ,a lover whowas a sweet tossing shoes in the air,in a romance like lastnight’s withered jasmines left as dregs on beauty hair’ssmelling on pillow.Sweets are cliches in teeth,smell clarifiedbutter.But shoes in air are strange birds since classified andfound in the fossil society’s rare bird archives.

(Referring to a Bollywood film titled Barfi)

43

Panic

As we had approached it we fell headlong into its oncoming, fitfulsweaty barrenness a blankness staring from our eyes, crazilytongue-tied like the evil man in a dark cloak with hell- hair on theears, covering sound.There was no option about music that came.

These were words in Charukesi of our God who stretched end toend in the deepest sky.We stood breathless as his feet measuredall the three worlds , under a palm umbrella one foot on our head,his wooden slippers making no clicking difference to sweaty silence.

Our panic held a bunch of iron keys in fists.Our breath wentout of our body as the keys opened inward sadness, a bodyheld captive as he measured infinity starting from our head.

44

Bird chick

The bird could be aloft and fluttering its wing but for design defectforming and falls and putters under cupboard crying from its inneranguish to God,inner anguish about others ineptitude, for which itputters about in half wing.

No point in fears about possible cats,possible smiling cats ofthe dark night.We are lucky locked in dreaming sleep.God islocked in his sleep in milk ocean.Night cat is, at all , tail-eatingrenewal ,an ouroboros of God-nature’s re-visit, a deja vu thingas we sleep our night.

45

Ceremony

We all went into a tedious little ceremony of lost innocence, in ourrainbows of wisdom.A man issued his words that touched souls ,softly spoke in the smells of turmeric and a faint fragrance ofinnocence and flame.His words flowed from his soft liquid eyes asthough he was a child entering knowledge wild-eyed and with tinybits of the blue sky,the earth having lost its contours in space waterand fire emerging in a litany of words.

It was a child who sat in a lap, with fingers in a bed of ricegrains that filled stomachs as though it was a food that fueledwisdom.He wrote his first letters as in a secret code to thetreasure-trove of burning treasures searing to the eye, hot onthe painted brow,a certain secret gold thread on a little chestthat qualified him for the arduous journey.He then gurgled firstletters, word and song.

(The initiation ceremony of a child’s first learning in which theGoddess of learning bestows her blessings on the child before hislong and arduous journey in education)

46

Flecks

The roof seemed to sit lightly on its light with the sun above and alooming rain.The roof thatch took light in soft mouth spitting a fewflecks of light to the floor.

The creeper spread itself on the scaffold in backyard, turning agreen gentle sky as moon flowers waited to turn pumpkins.Flecks ofmoon danced to a light breeze.

The wedding tent fought against the hot sun as a clarinet blewout its puffs of mouth.Flecks of a hot sun tickled the groom’sback causing bridal flurry ,while her own dress sported flecksstitched on a silken texture.

47

Wild tune

If it is wild tune, it is a poem ,says Frost,rather frostily of waves ofsnowed hills.Frosty breath goes of mountains falling.Tea breath thatwas cloud is here water.

Water is earth and mud about stone god .Stone god is helplessabout violent wife.Violent wife is piece of mother deranged becauseof progress dams in her bosom.

Her tune goes wild and somewhat eerie in the nights aboutdead people waiting for their fires to be lit after copterscome.Copters bring the wood for the wild tune.Stone god dadis waiting for his death ash.

(A busy pilgrimage until the flashfloods, Kedarnath today has turnedinto a virtual ghost town …..There’s an eerie silence at Phatavillage, broken each time a chopper lands or takes off. Threepundits are performing the last rites near the river Mandakini :Times of India report

48

Jewel thiefs

We are concerned with your story telling about events, other goingson in place. They do not exist in a plane of their own. The figuresare not two-dimensional ,hung by a thread ,triangularly to the wall.

Their eyes protrude from sockets and lips,the eyes , one to thenorth and the other screwed to the western pillar, in a squint as ifdislodging a sun ray from the skylight.In short they lack flesh andsome bones and they loom large like noon shadows,dark andmenacing, in the high afternoon.

They can scare the shit out of your eyeballs when you are notcareful of their coming.They zoom past, on their soundless bikesand rip your alabaster necks from behind.Your gold will stopglittering for their highs and you will remember your grandmother.

49

River legends

That time we saw the river rising quickly, past our sleeps anddrowning our everything including sleeping cots and then we heardcries of people climbing to roofs for a bit of a sky.

Legend had it of a young old man squatting hunched up in the atticup above the swirling waters as if he was reading from historybooks narrating a story down the ages.He was history mad,wateraverse.Actually he loved pillow too much being bald banker off therockers.

We were not bald but a training banker and too young to be off therockers. But what lovely rain to drown under ,what a pale sky to beafraid about.The sky was father we feared most.He would spankears with his rain to instill nature fear in bank minds.

Legend had it of mom now in a sky, my source river that rosein flowing dam to turn a legend as bodies flowed.The legendturned ashes in a river.

50

Smorgasboard

Picture your day , a lifetime story when written up ,fully and finally .Itis an old man’s story, not to be a mix of colors, weirdly textured,apalette of words, a brushstroke of uninitiated, an antic landlord.

Woman is doe-eyed, picture-like looking for her man perfect type aperfect type story, as eating out from your hand, a Saturdaypersona of long spun stories of grandma.

Grandmas are dead from paintings of exhaustion of laughter inprime.Stories flow under naughty moons.Grandmas were laughingat moon stuck in the night’s coconut palms.

Days go on like lives likely to stop,their eyes still retaining bits ofsky.Dream planes crash on sex snakes,their lips drooling onsoft pillows, fear ruling the juices under shirts while worldspins out the window.

51

Forgetting

Forgetting is a lot of things about my mom including me and Iforgetting a body from her.

Forgetting is in mind’s body. Its protein particles are river driedup in the source hills.Forgetting is erasing a mom fromprotein’s free flowing.

52

The world

And the world appears in the moment and disappears as a handfulof earth, in its lips-smacking flavours and slurps, some soundslater,a truly trite silence.Silence matters to nobody or to God.

We keep yapping about golden silence. Silver version is averageAdam’s apple going up and down ,in indecent haste, awoman-induced effort in a garden of mischievous serpents.

Actually world never happened except in a night’s sleep, assomebody’s dream in the cloth-cradle ,as a bundle of sleep,aselectric fan whirred above ,to breeze the bawling bundle to sleep off dreams.

53

Hail

While I was still holding a stomach ,the hail banged right on theplastic roof its luminous pearls lost to posterity.Grandsons havethem on tongues.

Stories shall be told on deathbed.Our extended tongues tastednone of the icicles except as they are projected to future grandsonsin time’s vague womb.

Do not hold a stomach for thunder .That is when a hail falls ona plastic.Stories do not make perfect storm.Hold a tongue up tosky to catch it.

54

Stroke

We do not like strokes in television watching, staring at a clockfixation as if smiling for ever, a frozen smile, not moving shadow onface ,flitting as if a white cloud passing on a hill and soft sunset hueadded for gold.Poets like to add gold everywhere.

Our stroke of luck does not happen all the time ,in the television orout.This sort of a smile is just some ice,a frozen Arctic wasteon mom’s face,fixed for ever and there is no gold,a wornsunset with no talk of dawn.

55

Distances of time

With a distance of time ,what had looked white would turn vagueand gray by growing years, our wading in knee-deep muddy rainwaters in the streets by white walls missing in places,the men whotucked white lungis in the waists,the coins that felt round to fingersin pockets,the rivers dancing round heads of mountains.

The walls stretched interminably to a white sky hiding bush andsnakes in them gently rising,feet shuffling to rustling sounds of dryleaves.The squirrels had built bridges for man-gods and earnedthree dark stripes on their backs.Strange birds sang in the skydeaths of lives.With more distance of time our eyes slowly felland the body hurried past closing our spaces.The distancesare now small, the skyline close.

56

The pugilist nose

At the start of the walk the fly danced around a pugilist nose in cleargeography of a gray sky with no rain, only a promise.

It seems raining in the other sky. Will the clouds turn rain like flies?In the sky is a swarm of doubts that will soon turn flies, flies buzzingaround a walking nose.

But now the sky is the other sky.And as I reach the end of thewalk the nose is fighting rain like flies.

57

Homesick

Soon he would become homesick ,sick of a home away from ahome where coconuts danced all night.He would go to bed and notget up.To a big bank of numbers and notes.

Small numbers crawl up to big ones where they swallow the smallones,in a big sky of a billion numbers,where light is distance , notsound.

You keep a day book of numbers but your red ledger is quicklyfilled,their figures enter steel cupboards where they would livefor the night.You forget to take them out next day.

(upon the passing of a senior colleague in my bank)

58

Ugh things

The butterfly was a crawling ugh thing on the road against mywoodland shoes of yesterday’s walking toward old man whodragged a limp foot for exercise.

The black itchy creature of ugly disgust is one’s own fear of death, adecrepit body trying to create its marvelous moments markingbeauty of tiny things, rainbows held aloft on grease bubbles on wetdays.

There is not much we can do about it,only project butterflies onugh things.

59

Truth

Truth is what touches a fringe,a fact that dated back to grandmothers eating their rice,one after the other, in Sanskrit.Contradiction is a dead tongue spoke to bring down bodiless,grandmother and grandmother, the rice eaters in their crows.

But that is what all our truth is.Truth is rice eating yearly crows thatunderstand only Sanskrit,that is the tongue of the dead.

We build bridges with the dead the way a bodiless truth works.Truth is learning our colleagues no more eat rice off theirplates.

60

Rain

For seven days and seven nights our rain would go on our thatchthat held our young crows captive.Their black was almost washed togray and the thatch looked a rice field sprouting last year’s left overrice.

We have made up the rain stories.Our farmers were taken offturbans and the light was not sunny yellow,only eerie ultra violetrays touching the bellies that had no raging fires.

Like the girls we have made it all up.

61

Next

We are in a hurry to know the next, curious to know.Our now askswho is next.This woman is a light-bulb and her light is in a pocketand shows through blouse.

Brother is a wind in trees gently passing old woods.He had a nextafter years of his brother’s early next.(His bulb had quite a light nowsoftly passing trees.)

We are in a hurry to know the next, curious to know.Thewoman is still her bulb with no next sign to light.She will behappy to know the next, curious to know.

62

Mirrors and sparrows

The way the mirrors stood we felt like recent sparrows pecking attheir bird selves to an infinity that goes on in such mirrors of history.They had built the mirrors to selves off men’s wealth and work, butsoon wealth was over and in the zenana the women stayed huddledin incompleteness of space.

The palace is like the queen’s,beyond the green of Atlantic.A kingguest offers its manna and palace stands in splendor,with banquetfor a hundred.

Now, a new hotel preened its feathers to men’s wealth.The noblesin long mustaches stared down from roof wood like they wereold sparrows looking at their own infinity.

(On a visit to the Falaknuma palace in Hyderabad)

63

Frittering away the moon

Four’ O clock, after mandatory piss ,not groping back to my bed Ipass through a good old poet’s shadow bumping into it on night’sbalcony where I go to check on clean moon.

The moon has just been siphoned off. The sky persists with itsremnants,hardly anyone’s idea of clean moon with the trees belowin numb homage,some crumbs for a rag-picking poet.

There was nothing laughable in this as a shadow’s sad stepswere heard. A moon can be frittered away in sleep.Happens ifwe do not get up for piss.

64

Stroke

When the stroke came she was watching television serial flowing inclimactic music in bass,a snarling of violins at the precise momentas bad woman entered.What a stroke of luck she passed, we saidof grandma in television.

Grandma outside television smiled at man’s heroics, girl’ssacrifices but her satisfied smile would stay pasted on herface, not get up to go,much after hero has left his stage andliving room has fallen silent with echoes of his drama sounds.

65

The box

One enters the box with spiked gate to make clockwise oval circlesof familiar world views, at times, with strange incursions of thoughtsasking why a certain black cat beside the rock and the sprinklerexists in today’s accomplished view.

It is not the cat alone by the rock. Try changing it to anticlockwise tosee strangely preoccupied faces that seemed to be thinking much inburping stomachs and acid.Squeals of old laughter greet morningviews of mist and rabbits- disappeared rabbits that had merelyjumped out of the box and gone. There was no grass left in the box.

We are making circular motions dutifully in our own squareboxes. We look up to see standing people in balconies ofred-and-blue houses bursting with morning men and lungis.They should be back in their box soon.

66

Stroke

In this mist are vague contours of people and shrouds of themwalking towards me and away like wind that wanders in mist or arain that comes in walking on the road ,as gusts of a wind, aspeople and daughters about, people and mine from a womb andwhite robed figures in long tails hanging from their necks.

My mind recognizes sovereignty of the foot, functioning onown.The fly does not walk its texture nor does the song set ittapping ,a ghost foot declaring rebellion,preferring to join themin a mist, as if parts are wholes themselves.

67

The village doctor

The man with a red dot looks down his eyes marginally to below theskin, the subterfuge where stomach humors show. The hakim ismonkey man of a myth’s fame, making men swallow brown pelletsfor quick cures for stomach’s skin and mind maladies that makewomen shake like full-blown trees caught in a windstorm, their hairdisheveled.

A middleman helps us wade crowds of men.Men wait outside toenter unreal iron cages,anterooms for an entry to the medicineman.The man would then bend his ears sideways to muttered talesabout stomachs and devils and scrawl prescriptions in quick roundletters that wriggled like earthworms in a new furrow.The middlemannow takes us to growing rice,proud to show his rice dominions tillsky-high.

We see more men coming for women’s ghosts .

68

The boy monks of Gangtok

In these hills they spoke mostly of frank-innocence, myrrh ,camphor,a white smoke curling to heavens, a hollow echo in layers of hillslike rumble of the first thunder.Boys are not boys,not even men ,justtiny gods scampering on hills in search of Big God,in sacrifice.A redapparel is their sun god intensely burning in standing trees.

Innocence is at stake, in cricket and ludo,a game of dice andchance, a flicker of smile, a wave of mirth surging in the hillslike a stream,freshness traded for Big Knowledge.

69

Common poem

Between us two and common poem is tree with potential redflowers.Take care ,you perpetual woman.You and I shall listen tothis tree, its bark ravaged by time like face letting the big petal dropsfall and tears from leaves,drop by drop.

Let me pour its red flowers in your palm.Take care , youperpetual woman .Also you take care of boat in Ganga and itsgentle ripples on our shore.

(I watched this beautiful Bengali movie Bhalo Theko yesterday)

70

Uncle is idea

Uncle is now idea, on green carpet and a house beside twococonuts,as we see a fire rage in a kitchen and pigtails quiver withfire chants.Last time, a year ago, he was thing on way to be mereidea in my mind.The thing is now an abstract thing,an argumentaway from a sarcasm.

Uncle is an idea together with dad and a mom of the far off mangotree.The ideas vanish when I turn idea,an argument with neatconclusion.

71

Uncle

It was time to cease to be an uncle, a lecturing dad , a senti brother,to he who stared from a photo, in grayscale rolled shirtsleeves.Uncle would stare at the bottom of the starry sky. Later, nephewwould join him.

While uncle was at it ,in his life he had bitten his sarcastic lips aboutthe world and its maker and you nephew was peculiar.

Nephew now asks uncle to wait till he reaches a house bottom sothey will jointly stare a sky making fine sarcasm together.

72

Protein

Forgetting is a lot of things like mom resigned to forget where shewas my other day.Forgetting is in body’s mind,in protein specs freeflowing.

Forgetting is a lot of things about my mom including me forgetting abody from her.

Forgetting is in mind’s body ,its protein particles a river dried up inthe source hills.

Forgetting is erasing mom from a protein free flowing.

73

Scenery

We continue to pit two tiny hillocks against the infinity of a skybending dangerously on the brown bushes with loud explosions intheir rear and a gray smoke in the elevation.We have a man and awoman near,two faceless figures for a scenery.They have no facesbut cheekbones.

A rock gets angry with a loud bang with machines making it looksmall in the bigness of the blue scenery.Woman bathes inemptiness of rock.Rock falls into emptiness of morning as smallerholes bath in bigger holes.Brown bushes bath in their shadows.

Holes have shadows in themselves.Shadows have no holes in ascenery.There are tiny eruptions in shadows like lizards in holesquickly catching tiny eruptions to eat their emptiness.

We are in a hurry to pit two tiny hills against the infinity of abreathless sky before it eats them into its emptiness.

74

Layers

There is the rattle of the machine and a vigorous thump on itsflanks, another noisy night thump to quiet the dusty cooling faninside C.P.U. letters separated by layers of dust.They fly away,keep them together with full stops between the letters.

The water bottle is down with a neck hole semi-circular for sippinglike a semicircular moon in balcony with a night wind quietlyhumming.The night watchman’s whistle bores a semi-circular holein the midnight.

Now is pressure on top of a prostate falling for a leak, like expectedcloud in monsoon any time coming but not, being satirical about aswollen strawberry lightly woken from sleep for poetry.

A he he is about old man’s love life come to ceasura. A vigorousthump administered yields no love results punctuation gone througha window.

Poetry is still left in a night’s layers when peeled like tearfulonion rings nothing at the core,only an absence,a silencebetween the layers of dust.

75

Wild tune

This is a wild tune ,folks, from snow hills of woman grass heads,asflute sings ruin on precipices over watching endless tea. Wild tune isnow a poem of personal ruin.If it is wild tune, it is a poem ,saysFrost, rather frostily of waves of snowed hills. Frosty breath goes ofmountains falling.Tea breath that was cloud is here water.

Water is earth and mud about stone god. Stone god is helplessabout violent wife.Violent wife is piece of mother deranged becauseof progress dams in her bosom.Her tune goes wild and somewhateerie in the nights about dead people waiting for their fires to be litafter copters come.Copters bring the wood for the wild tune.Stonegod dad is waiting for his death ash.

(A busy pilgrimage until the flashfloods, Kedarnath today hasturned into a virtual ghost town …..There’s an eerie silence atPhata village, broken each time a chopper lands or takes off.Three pundits are performing the last rites near the riverMandakini : Times of India report)

76

Truth in a Mumbai local train

Images do not mean much ,only idle fancy, a passing show slidingaway by a train,with hanging people as big busy blurs.The trackspeople mean only squatters off houses of tarpaulin sitting withcrows.

These dark birds squat on the tracks to hit a train’s bottom, wantingto get at truth,a morning’s getting a sky’s orange worth.

Images do not get at truth ,only at blurs.They move slowly likesqueaking train fans as if to get at truth, unhindered by crowd.But nobody ever got at truth in a local train.

77

Stars by his last count

She has now come to keep the night in a state of rumble, a peaceunkept ,a remember of a day that stretched like days in no hurry ofdenouement ,when nothing would finally happen.

Another lady went away of malignancy leaving a high and hiccupinghusband with a dancing throat in the kitchen in male egotism andpaternal rights.The lady has since embraced her fire leaving herman entirely unembraced.

She ,whose eyes have long gone wild in her son’s sleep, islooking for stars in the night at their last count by him.She hasforgot the count in the melee, of she who went away toembrace fire leaving husband highly unembraced.

78

The fall

This fat lady is of the fall in the dark Kolkata night of an uncle nomore in air.The fall could have been branch -arresting, if only therewere a tree between balcony and earth ma.

It is the telephone wires that did the arresting bit .The fall wenton,unfailing ,the way to mother earth on the pavement where amother earth smelled a garbage of old lettuces for dogs and boys toscrounge at break of smoked dawn.

The falling lady goes on with her daily business, children’smarriages, the duties of a grandma she owes to earthma.About bones life flowed,blood flowed to gravity but fallgoes on in body,the stuff of her dreams and in my own dreams,an image of endless fall.

79

Water

With two coconuts and wind to wave in ,there is angry God at theother shore.Between us and him there is a wading,as if of oblivion,of our never returning.

We are wading chest -high in waters and our heads below ourdrowning act.These waters are our common wading,a threadthrough our living and dying.

This is the very aqua inside the coconuts,waving in high wind, thevery waters,we had come from and we had waded,when we hadbegun,our eyes still shut,to a blinding sun waiting at cave’s end.

(on a visit to Narsing Jeera temple in Bidar)

80

White lies

White lies is what the man in the story tells his wife about theirnon-existent sons in America,The story of four sons . Three of themare in America earning their filthy dollars while the fourth one hasstayed back at home to look after the aged parents.

The sons in white America send white dollars to the parents toenable their journey.What if one of them has a white wife who isgood enough to get him to buy a car for them and it is still a whitelie.

How nice,who knows what lies ahead!White America, white wife,white lies.

The man spins his yarns in the train’s clackety,clackety to a wifewho knows in the depths of her heart it is these lies, these white liesthat make up their lives.

To the lone fellow-passenger who has own white lies tospeak.Everyone has his own white lies. His narratives fill the vastsilences of the night as the train slices through them.Their whitefluorescence illumines the darkness in his soul.

It is these white lies that dispel black existential questions for amoment.Like the soft beam of the train’s headlight that bringsseveral dark bushes into transitory existence and then leavesthem to the oblivion of the night.

81

( A Telugu short story entitled “Yatra Special” by Dr.SomarajuSusheela)

82

Paper boats

We recall a rather silly paper boat we made folded with a pyramidrising right from the middle of it. Where would the villagers standand the boatman with his oars?

In the early days of boat making boats had these clumsypyramids,albeit with no pharaohs beneath.We had just learnt boatmaking for our temporary rain puddles.There was no cold night’sdesert with a Sirius ruling from above.

Our grandchildren find it rather difficult to reconcile desert pyramidswith monsoon street puddles ,leaving little space for boatmen withoars and standing villagers.

With quarter page of newspaper what could anybody have done ifrain had come to our streets with no prior intimation to us amid noflood alerts on radio?

83

Potato peeling

We had been peeling our days, me and mom, she hers, I mine.Herpotatoes were chips for a roof drying ,like her mangoes that wentdrying for a year’s dinner.Mine were a flicker, a light now here, nowgone. I had peeled my days off the sun.Bits of a sun went drying formy roof pickles.

When all the others were away at the Mass , the child and mompeeled their respective potatoes. Plop fell their feelings in thebucket. The others were wiping their tears.Her head bent towardshim the potatao peeling way.

My mom’s potatoes are no more. I am still peeling my sun off itsdusk.

(Referrring to the poem “When all the others were away at theMass” by Seamus Heaney)

84

Mirrors

The way the mirrors stood we felt like recent sparrows pecking attheir bird selves,to an infinity that goes on in such mirrors of history.They had built the mirrors to selves off men’s wealth and work, butsoon wealth was over and in the zenana women stayed huddled inincompleteness of space.

The palace is like the queen’s, beyond the green of Atlantic.A kingguest offers its mannaAnd palace stands in splendor,with banquet for a hundred.Now, anew hotel preened its feathers to men’s wealth.The nobles in longmustaches stared down from roof wood like they were old sparrowslooking at their own infinity.

(On a visit to the Falaknuma palace in Hyderabad)

85

The old woman

She was the old woman of our age as we hurtled towards our oldage,her crinkle too young for our age.Her body shook an entirelaughter,acting life like it was no real thing.

An old woman of our essential age,her body wrinkled as if it laughedits guts out, emptying inner bags of its several childhoodlaughters,spilling on the floor, rolling over as inside-splitting ,old hagbodies that had gone and to go hereafter.

(At the ripe age of 102 , the veteran actress Zohra Sehgal passedthis year)

86

White

A telephone call talked of an an old man with a white topee .Hissmall-time father ,who worked in a cement factory.The cement is nolonger.The white topee is no longer.

Memories linger of a city on the sea where the waves beat blackgranite rocks.The white surf of an ocean which stretches to distantAden.There the ancestors had landed in a dhow to maketradesmen’s money.

Tall white stone buildings which stood against the blue sea.At nightthey wore the transparent veil of pale moonlight .On moonlit nightsperfumed society people stood against the ocean .Among the rockswhere the waves from the distant Gulf beat their city.

Dark people sold smuggled tape recorders with whirring tape-spools.The whitewashed buildings had white peace in their upper bellies.But in their under-bellies they had fishermen’s knives and redrevenge .

A frail old man from the city made white salt at the sea-shore andspun white cotton on hand-wheels and made others wear white.

87

Cold

The distinguished pink of your nose,a mild river that has sprung inthroat strikes head, stuffs it wth emptiness,like hollow sound of windin wheat.The hum is explained by blood rivers.Just check if plateletsare a profusion.Check if you are holding adieu session in the head,where it is all happening.

Adieus need not be noisy all the time but just a hum of the cataractnearby or pigeon’s gutar-gu in a window-sill, a soft sound stretchingtime endlessly. Rivers flood kerchiefs like in monsoon,in tidystreamlets through the nose bridge. We hope the heart hides nomurmurs in this holesome hum drowning world.

88

Another mountain is dead

A little golden girl walked towards me from the hills with the morningsun in her hair .At the road’s corner I see a shirtless man on the scooter , with thesacred thread that hovered on his hairless chest.He is our templeman , our friendly intermediary between us and God.His words werea mere drone in the temple loud speaker in the morning but surelythe power of his words before God exceeded the earth’s borders.Hehas a belly round as God’s earth, with cosmic incantations in themfor calling down thirty million gods from the sky.It was his words andflame and water that connected us to our monkey god.

Later in the day a lonely worker chipped away at the neighbor’s roof.He was repairing a leaking roof that stood between the sky and myneighbor when the sky poured torrents of rain on his head.Thesounds of his relentless hammer-beats echoed in the hollowafternoon air.The sounds were interspersed by a yellow bird’stireless notes.The notes came from our dead standing tree whichwas still hosting beautiful yellow birds ,while awaiting its finalexecution by the municipal Axe.

In the afternoon ,one heard a loud explosion in the distance whichrattled our windows and set off bunches of cawing crows from thesleeping trees.

Another mountain is dead in our neighborhood.

89

His moustache is jasmine

There is this old jasmine seller whose mustache has grown white asjasmines .In the basket on his head a string of fragrant jasmines laycurled like a cobra waiting to be charmed.He sells arm’s lengths ofstrung jasmines,one length going for ten rupees.His white shirt andwhite turban have gone brown with the dust of the streets likeyesterday’s wilted jasmines.

I pretend everything is fine and there is no ten year time frame formy existence .The lady there says ,when she first came into thenew house there were a lot many things to do because at fifty yearsof age there was no time frame fixed for her. Now at sixty the timeframe is clearly visible and so, there are not many things to do,saysshe.

Birthdays are closing spaces between chunks of time,asemi-colon in our life’s sentence.The old man who sellsjasmines seems to be pretending that there is no time frame forhis existence.Can I not pretend the time frame does not exist?

90

Faery tale

It looks like you are through with the stock of fairy tales told in theevening hour. As the night’s stars appear one by one to occupy theirpositions in the hall,a soft breeze will stir in jasmine bush fromevening’s wetness of fresh leaves.As to the prince finally saving thedame , everyone shall be duly happy at hall’s end.

The hall is empty with the stars coming one by one, as your breezegently stirs in the flower bush and the garden lizard looks at yourwaiting for the next move.The lizard is your own word in the offing.

Your reasons are a grand abeyance show as the lizard is waiting forthe next move .And a prince moves ahead on horseback towardeveryone’s happiness of wedding.

91

Rain in Bhopal

Evening rain glistens on the road as bread is bought and bananasare turned over for ripeness and less ripeness.The rain is dancingon the car roof .From the car the camera tries to catch the wet sunon the leaves of the corner tree .Soon the wipers catch fever andquickly we make our way in a sea of umbrellas.

92

Weddings in summer

In the street there is an improvised tent with people sitting on hotcolored plastic chairs.

The tent burst with clarinet music played by a wedding band.Weddings are just some clarinet music and some plastic chairs withpeople in them. The bridegroom ,in a thick suit,comes out brieflywearing a red vermilion on his forehead and a blotch of sweat underhis arm.

Marriage is sweat,blood and tears.Marriages are hot ,sweaty and blood-red.Marriages are tents full of clarinet music.Marriages are incomprehensible Sanskrit chants.

Marriages are silk sarees rustling as though the spring wind isalready here.

93

Seeing is for the asking

Seeing brims over our things ,storms our teacups, fillsanchorages,balconies for a night, sunlit spaces in tall trees ,cornerswhere a mom meets a shadow,a lizard on the wall. Seeing is yoursin my words.

Seeing is water not spilling from a child’s hands clasping the glasswith both his hands moving feet in slow measured motion or hissquatting on the floor drawing feet together to cry ,opening andclosing his feet like tentacles,in beach sand on their way back to thesea.

Seeing is yours for my words. Old woman is emitting light ,acamera’s laughing at death.Seeing is her skin’s wrinkled clouddrained of a future rain.

Seeing is a word on this keyboard.

94

Place

Place is its loose dust and red powder, all over the road with iron,for shippingto far lands in deadweight for money.Place is blood money, revengeon hills.Place weighs down ships by its redness and looseness of soil, arubble of bodygranulated and pouring in bag chinks.

A shrub blinks at redness and is covered in eyes at the opposite hill,entirely nude as hill competes in redness with sunset. Sun is notplace ,only time for bleeding.

Place is man-altered landscape of color when green changes to red,red to gray. Water changes to land boiling for men to change theirdresses, to eat breakfast and fuck their women in shades of gray.

95

Metaphors are many

I collect my images in the park ,put them in the empty canvas here

I people my canvas with images

A metaphor within a metaphorJust not one image within another but onion-peels of several imagessome of them bearing another image within themselves.Canvas is one image .People the canvas with images is anotherwithin this image and images themselves are metaphors for people !The possibilities seem endless !

Other imagesAn old bald man realized the blue infinitude of the sky in his toesTwo girls flowed together on the jogging track their ponytailsswinging in sync.The water flowed from the tube in the grass like soundKeep alive witnessing the yogic death of a man on the grassBeyond him, above the wall are the coconut’s standing silences

That was all my rich rakings for that day.

96

Dirt

Not finding dirt we went on to find only chunks of butter that flittedbefore eyes.Where is the dirt was then carefully asked ,to moveaway from our dirt, in isolation behind the finger nails, where we allgo. Not finding dirt in the little god’s mouth its mother saw a wholeuniverse of dirt.

Dirt flowed from excess butter in veins from buffaloes calmlychewing their cud over troughs of sticky rice husk porridge.Theirlower mandibles moved on to night.Below them was rain dirt feetsquished in.

Excuse me ,we talked of dirt against dust .As if there was differencein biblical terms. Dry dirt can be dust we are a handful of.Wecollected it under varnished fingernails after carefully filing them,with tiny whites now visible from under them like old stars emergingfrom a night sky festival. While we were still awake ,the nail whiteswere softly flying birds from Siberia seen in the eastern sky overhouses and trees.They would drop down under our fingers as wewaved little fingers at their wings.They went back soon after theirnesting .

97

Images

We have other images of ourselves hollow men, fleshed out of ourbones, poor nightly creatures of fluorescence roaming the emptywastes of minds. We have our original men in rolled shirtsleevesstaring from ancient space, not yet knowing my coming, that meanthis own going from all space in time.There was space only for oneof us.

All our images are shadows from past that are cast on our spaceeven after real things are gone except in sleep.

98

Skyline

With distance of time ,what had looked white turned gray by growingyears our wading in knee-deep muddy rain waters in the streetsalong white walls missing in places ,the men who tucked whitelungis in the waists,the coins that felt round to fingers in pockets, therivers dancing round heads of mountains.Strange birds sang in thesky deaths of lives.

With more distance of time our eyes slowly fell and the bodyhurried past closing our spaces.The distances are now small,the skyline close.

99

The window pane

The man sits in his shop with a pair of glassy eyes.He has no timeto fix a see-through window-glass that is deeply in love with the sunin our kitchen.The pane sits there tight ,basking in the sun’s glow.Our women love the sun but not when making tea.

There are trees in the pane waving in the wind.Their birds chirp atdawn, their speckled throats heaving up and down, as we calmly eatbreakfast.It is not winter yet and the fog is yet to blind its eyes. Laterwhen the sun turns angry, he will beat it down ,on its smoothness ofcheeks ,gate-crashing kitchen,invading our women’s privacy as theymake our tea. And the gas-flame will lose its blue face in the glare.It looks like the pane has to embrace its dark night.

100

Dying of excess life

It was as though I was not ready and it might slip away in anunrecorded moment.

Life would slip away that evening. Because of excess life,redundancy in cells. Dying of excess life. The lady would collectfrost in the cellar : her death would go on, till the next day when shewould embrace fire. In the meantime life would go on. The musicwould go on in the street temples of the elephant-God linking herdeath to our life.

We shall die, when our turn comes.Like her we may die of excesslife .Or of excess death

101

The 70’s man

He floats around the park like a creature from another time ,anotherspace.He wears the 70’s clothes and listens ,as he floats in thepresent space ,to the 70’s music which emerges out of his leftpocket and spreads like a rain -puddle around him

In the blue clouds andover the waves of the windI hear the song you sing

He is the 70’s man who wears the 70’s side-burns and thinks like a70’s man.Those were the days for them.Those are the days for him.