Blacker than wine from the loaded grapes of France,
Blacker than mud their Tamil minds recall,
Dark skins serving dishes to the sallow
Sweat more night than grapesblood has. All
The long summers they abjured, for chance
Of better prospects, change, a sun of contrast,
Stick in a language their clients won’t allow.
Must button up their manners with the past.
Grow expert on the epicure’s stuffed heart,
Polite of speech, punctilious, guarded, kind.
As guardians of good taste, these waiters know
The soiled and cluttered kitchens of the mind,
The rancid oils where sweeter dishes start,
Cooked, like a pick-up’s words, the soot-black roof
Behind our pasted smiles: their darkness grew
To insight in their day; they stand aloof.
But slacken in their service after eleven.
Guarding the day’s unending appetites,
Grow shifty-eyed, avoid our munching faces,
The spit and polish of our eating rites.
Then closing time: they dream of a foodless heaven,
Shrug off their coats like priestly cloaks of pity,
Day’s ministry complete. Slip to their sleeping places
In the throat of the feasted, pink-faced city.
(Part I: Scene from the Life)
1
House Full. It's a shocker. Keep still.
Blood crawls from a crack. Keep still.
It's all happening.
It's a spear.
It's your saviour.
It's a quiet mirror with hair all over
born
to a middle-class mother.
God's gift for further reflection.
There's trouble outside:
crowds, stammering guns, the sea
screaming from side to side.
2
For The First Time On Your Screen
MISSING
JACK
A slave's revolt and fall
His first cry with his mother
his last look with a wall-
no round-up by sunset, no final corral-
his wit with his friends,
his seed with fugitive bodies
as settled as armchairs now
seething with other men’s children
No one believes
[jump cuts here
from mother to mistress and back]
his sepia distant or lurid recent
past.
Don't shut your eyes. It’s only a movie.
'That speeding train-
It is my life.
Those are my hands-
split-ends of sabotage.’
Again and again, buttonholes friends
turned strangers, strangers friends
‘Believe, that's me on the screen
through the stuttering dust, through the burst-open door
The running dog runs but they’ve put out its eyes.
‘Once I was whole, I was all.
Believe, why don’t you believe?’
8
A mill of tubercular children
is what he wears.
The wretched of history storm into
they smash
his house of ideas.
Who puffed up an Empire’s sails
still fuel the big-power ships
still make him fly
high to jet-setter fashion.
Blood tumbles down sleeves
hung upside down
to dry in his flat.
He'll wreck himself yet;
docked in a. bar with a criminal friend,
his shirt wrapping him like a wet
sail, his wood carcass breaking and burning
in mutinous sweat.
9
He travels the way of devotion
but no sky lights
his street.
A river of pills brings him no raft.
Death goes awash with wishing.
Cripples his own mouth then, sits
killing his tongue, sits
barred up behind his teeth.
Bright sparks
on the international back-slapping circuit
are picking up prizes like static.
He's for the dark.
10
God of our fathers,
of the broken tribe
and the petrified spirit,
why did you send us this horror?
Nothing we put in stayed put.
We put in the family history and prayers,
they flew out as comics.
Fed him grandmamma's custards, he spewed.
We poured in the tonics
but nothing sweetened his tongue.
He thrust it out
again and again,
the bloodied head of an arrow
made the girls run.
Drive your shafts through his neck
Switch your hunting lights on.
For years we prompted his first
words, scolding the servanys for theirs:
‘Sweetie, say:
Let there be light, let their be us.’
We heard:
‘Let there be dung.
12
In the fist of a rioting people
his rotting head.
A mirror fires at him point blank
and yells, 'Drop dead
colonial ape,
back under an idealist spell.
Yes, you've made it to some kind of hell,
backslider, get liquidated.’
‘Wait! you know whose side
I’m on,’ he shouts,
‘but the people, their teeth bright as axes
came after my stereo and cattle,
came after my bride
I’ve said all my prayers
O pure in
thought word and deed have I been
delivering sun,
yet you gild street-urine-
theirs!’
So what’s the scenario
for our two-bit hero
but sliding back further
into a gun,
but travelling on,
paling at riots and slaughter,
forgetting his family, rejecting his son,
men with raised arms, stripped of their skin,
passing him village on village,
seared in the blast of no food,
in the shock of no water?
14
Bright angels — where?
[the final
scene: so choir]
so faintly heard,
so long and lost a pause
in this underthumbed compendium of joy
that's still his earth,
his shouts for law and order
won't shake the posse off;
its dogs
harry, attack,
are at his throat and back.
Watch his murder.
His cock, his ears, his eyes, his tribe
will have as penance. That won't make him sick.
The better to feel your love?
He coughs and kicks
with historical poisons,
bookdust, lies
that turn his words to sand.
(Say the nigger does exist. You'll save.
Smash his pride and enter.)
The trapped wrist says it all,
how barren branches fall,
how talents winter.
To break away. To stand
in steady confutation of the Law
is what the skunk demanded.
He stole his father's bread. He spat on him
and said, 'Your reign has ended.'
Students of Eng. Lit.,
still bunched round her merciful tit,
be up and about,
face more terror than you can take.
And this is how you will end:
Before the final fade-out, like an ad:
‘Here is our smug little watch that's lost its hands.
Here is our own Bugs Bunny who acted funny....’
There in the dark with the dogs, in pieces,
your fucking fake.
And here's an announcement:
Hope
which periodically triggers
some men to act
and looses the bonds of the earth,
has set a bright tide revolving inside me, a door.
Give up your seats and join the cast of thousands,
revolve about his pieces too
(brown slaves, black vamps, white faggots,
deceivers, women who rend and claw)
and hear that head still singing...
0 fallen throats that went down in a war,
0 waters of the dark connection,
O pit of blood and knuckles,
Open, open up your jaws,
and hold me there — your missing person.
Approaching
Santa Cruz Airport,
Bombay
Loud benedictions of the silver popes,
A cross to themselves, above
A union of homes as live as a disease.
Still, though the earth be stunk and populous,
We're told it's not: our Papa’ll put his nose
Down on cleaner ground. Soon to receive
Its due, the circling heart, encircled, sees
The various ways of dying that are home.-
‘Dying is all the country’s living for,’
A doctor says. ‘We’ve lost all hope, all pride.’
I peer below. The poor, invisible,
Show me my place; that, in the air,
With the scavenger birds, I ride.
Economists enclosed in History’s
Chinese boxes, citing Chairman Mao,
Disintegrate or crash in civil war.
Contrarily, the Indian diplomat,
Flying with me, is confident the poor
Will stay just as they are.
Birth
Pyramids the future with more birth.
Our only desert, space; to leave the green
Burgeoning to black, the human pall,
The free
Couples in their chains around the earth.
I take a second look. We turn,
Grazing the hills and catch a glimpse of the sea.
We are
now approaching Santa Cruz: all
Arguments are endless now and I
Feel the guts tighten and all my senses shake.
Claw, shriveled inside the casing of a cage
Forever steel and foreign, swoops to take
Freedom for what it is. The slums sweep
But singing while the benedictions pour
Out of a closing sky. And this is home,
Watched by a boy still as a shut door
Holding a mass of breadcrumbs like a stone