Something strange is happening
to the walls —
in their brick hearts there is
a fire rekindled.
Speech bubbles escape
them. Outside, unaided
by microscopes – naked
and visible –
the walls are trying to say something.
The shore vanishes.
Under a lowering unfamiliar sky
the constellations reveal themselves
in short, incomprehensible bursts.
We are lost
to the waves, to the chasing spray,
the tossing horses
and to the country we have left behind.
To ourselves,
lost.
Ahead, a wild chase
we don’t yet know what
wealth: gold, ivory, pepper,
we hope.
I say, geese. Sheep. Dung.
On different shores now
we have drawn lines on the water
and this is where
the ink runs out:
where fingers darker than ours
clutch shiny glass beads
and where through the sudden night
a trumpet sounds our banishment.
Stripped of
their human presence and meaning, we can see in the cup, the bath, the shoe,
the bicycle, how many strange, lonely and often ugly things we make for the world.
The category-instability of the thing is easily made apparent: a chair suddenly
looks like firewood when it gets cold enough.
—Don
Paterson
Manu, self-born, arises like a thought
and looks for things to hold on to.
But objects imagine themselves
one into the other. Donkeys stretch their skins over drums,
skins hold water for thirsty pilgrims, and the women
cannot be contained.
Imagination yokes us.
We are beasts of burden
tied to our words.
we are really thinking
of something else.
But language has us in its grip and
we try to hold that note, prolong it
so that nothing beats that can be heard
but your old, uncomprehending heart.
is not very hard won here:
mouths fat with the glottal stops
of out-of-work miners
from a cold, northern land
give the lie to scarecrow clothes
worn like a bag lady’s (from another shore)
one on top of the other;
scrounging fingers gleam with rings
invert, dip, say hello
in unfamiliar tongues.
These streets cannot be ours
or perhaps it’s we (the people)
who don’t belong.
Our self-images lie shattered,
like the mobbed shop windows
that gape a scream
in the bleached hard indefinite sun.
Wander lust
I power
my shoes with
maps
of continents
drifting along
different fault lines
No
nostalgia
for shapes our
stories
might have taken
In the new east
we give birth
squatting
on the fears
of lost
generations.
We have gathered here today
to curate the rain,
record its falling. We have gathered
to hold the season
like a cool veil
over our scorching days.
But think also, for a moment
of those who stand below the gathering clouds.
History is nothing
if not the telling of it;
if nobody speaks of remarkable things
who will know
about torn lands where the rains
do not fall at this time,
where the skies only hurl
dark things
and where nothing quenches
the thirst of bones.
Who will know, if we do not speak,
that in the time when swings ought to be draped
with flowers and trees brought to life
by the touch of a foot,
the only thing that blooms fiercely
is the blood of those
who did not ask for the battle
to be brought into their homes
while they lay asleep,
moving imperceptibly
from sleep to death
in the way that the clouds
leach into the air and
make it heavy with the weight
of water, make it sharp
with pain.
Many things rain down upon us
but perhaps all things
cannot be celebrated, even in season.
Without quite knowing how,
I’ve lost the language of my childhood.
I’ve forgotten how to write about
the way dusty roads look
early in the morning when they lead
to cool mango trees low enough
to climb. I’ve lost the trick of
capturing, if I ever knew how,
the smell of ghee on the woman
who came to sell it door-to-door,
and we stared at each other in outrage:
I, at how she seemed to have forgotten her blouse
and nobody else noticed, and she at how
I shamelessly lounged in shorts
and nobody seemed to mind.
When did I forget the word for those flies
that winked in and out
of the evening while we waited
for someone in a field of lanterns?
In the city, I have a restricted vocabulary.
My numerous words have put
me in a place from where I can only
occasionally see, each
experience separated and defined
by what I don’t have the words for.
Use the early mornings to recall
the gravel between the toes
on those long-ago
barefoot walks to school
as the dew on the lawn
you gave yourself as a gift
now slides gratefully
between the cracks in your heels.
And when getting up from making
an elaborate, beautiful kolam
is not as easy as it has now become
to let go,
know
that you have passed on
much more than
an impression of age;
that some things are written
not in the genes
but in the bones of those
who are now growing up
and will in turn leave behind
a legacy of ageless trees.
1.
Sthiraha: One million seven hundred
and twenty eight thousand years
and yet virtue remains
undiminished.
Sukham: Nothing, no act, no deed
will send out rippling
into infinity
the faintest echo of evil.
Asanam: He sleeps on
unmoved unmoving.
His dreams have just begun.
2.
Sacrificial white
clean, virginal.
The fires rise up
a corridor, a line
of communication.
Bend your head in supplication:
there are ways to join
your purity with your desires.
3.
Churn it up, my friend.
Collect the poison
of those silent battles
unvoiced lies
and hold it
in your throat,
that your little one
may not be tinged
with this bitterness.
See?
Your throat is blue.
The world is safe.
4.
They want to link the rivers
bring water to the parched
make the whole land holy
with the filth of every decomposed
body, offering and oblation
I carry.
Did you know
when you captured me
and reduced me to a mute fountain
from your dark, matted locks
that this is how
it would end?
Shelter
Strength comes from within.
I want to be like a tree
on which the birds rest
but when they fly away
there is no pain.
Just the peace of the air
the feel of the wind
on my leaves
which drop when the seasons change
with no regret.
The hours pass swiftly,
fleeing from a rumour
of quiet knives. Alone in the car,
she waits and listens as the leaves
drop on the roof, one note louder
than silence.
The side-view mirror is aligned
to show firm lips
and the chin below, trembling a little; if the tears
have gathered they haven’t yet made
their way down to what the mirror sees.
She waits, she listens.
With the patience of tinder she watches him
open the gate, carrying behind him
the invisible winds of a conflagration.