PLEASURE, FORBIDDEN

Night ruled
in the place
blazing with lights
left on long past bedtime.
Trapped in the filigree bottle,
the musk that
meant forbidden.

A whiff at the wrist
and I saw the high red heels,
wicked and comforting,
the beaten filigree earrings
with the shyest drop of pearl,

the white hanky
with the perfect pink rose
too delicate to bear thinking about,
too real for the crush
of a perfumed faintly sweaty hand,

the fur purse
savage beyond desire,
the golden clasp snapping
its purring jaws tight
in the crush of a golden night.

Always the same pieces
of an ancient five-year old
trembling to be older.
And always, sharpest,
the troubled image of denial,

all dressed up, refusing to go
and leave the children alone,
no matter that a neighbour will look in later,
no matter that he has done it all for her,
no matter that he begs,

she will not go out tonight,
and for the first time
the five-year old senses
there is more to the forbidden
than pleasure.

CONVERSATION

You carry his curse
in those clouded eyes, Dhritarashtra.
Your mother flinched
from him that night.
His breath smelt of roots
and his chest was white.
More demon than lover he seemed.
So your mother did it blind
and shut the darkness in on you.
You woke seeing nothing,
regret eternal in your howl.

But you?
What made you, Gandhari,
put out the light
that was given you, freely?
He could have seen through you,
the pale green of the thin-veined leaf,
the shadow trembling on the palace wall.
He did not ask for this companionship,
harsh as the cloth around your eyes,
grim as your unkissed lips.
Instead of this implacable love,
you should have given him sight.

Or

did he seem more demon than lover to you,
his mouth slack and spittled,
his hands like dead birds,
his face a graveyard,
reproach crawling
out of his eyes?

Twice doomed to darkness,
he sits beside you now,
husband and father
to your hundred sons.
You are not stone, yet.
You have lived many lives
behind that mocking veil.
Tear it off.
Flinch from the sun one last time.

TEMPLE OF RAIN

It rained.
Crash of deluged lightning
cymballed out of the sky.
We gave ourselves to the storm,
racing the wind bracing the slopes.
A father's fist herded his children
in and out of an umbrella.
We looked at them and laughed.
Water glinted off the trees
and unveiled a wooden temple.
No walls no roof no creaking floor
just curtains pouring down.
History melted in that moment.
Gods wept for some old wound.
No trace remained of the king who built it
the priest who ruled it.
No story stayed
for gloomy Sunday afternoons.
Just the way the children darted,
eel-like, through the drops
and the women wrung out their clothes.

Some affinities

must not be named.

Ash and honey.
Stone and scar.

Heavy with dread
I watch
it happen.

The tungsten filament
ignite.

HUMMINGWORD

There is a certain kind
of listening
that brings it closer
to my straining heart
pulse ruby in my throat.

Patient,
tuning to that invisible pitch,
one octave higher
than silence.

Blood rush of cochlea
and tympanum,
hush.

It will come
with a flapping of wings
a whirring of little beaks
a stirring of tongues.

Twelve-sixty times per minute
it will beat in my uncurled fist,
my quickening skin.

And in that moment
of perpetual motion,
it will turn visible
at last.

Small, perfect,
a flying jewel,

my hummingword,
longing for nectar, thirsting
to burst into song.

FADING
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