MY STUDENTS

My students think it funny

that Daruwallas and de Souzas

should write poetry.

Poetry is faery lands forlorn.

Women writers Miss. Austen.

Only foreign men air their crotches.

DON”T LOOK FOR MY LIFE IN THESE POEMS

Poems can have order, sanity,

aesthetic distance from debris.

All I’ve learnt from pain

I always knew,

but could not do.

SWEET SIXTEEN

Well, you can’t say

they didn’t try.

Mamas never mentioned menses.

A nun screamed: You vulgar girl

don’t say brassieres

say bracelets.

She pinned paper sleeves

onto our sleeveless dresses.

The preacher thundered:

Never go with a man alone

Never alone

and even if you’re engaged

only passionless kisses.

At sixteen, Phoebe asked me:

Can’t it happen when you’re in a dance hall

I mean, you know what,

getting preggers and all that, when

you’re dancing?

I, sixteen, assured her

you could.

ADVICE TO WOMEN

Keep cats

if you want to learn to cope with

the otherness of lovers.

Otherness is not always neglect ---

Cats return to their litter trays

when they need to.

Don’t cuss out of the windows

at their enemies.

That stare of perpetual surprise

in those great green eyes

will teach you

to die alone.

OTHERNESS/WISE

I have spoken much of

otherness

and must now alas,

practice what I teach.

You’re poems are no longer

messages for me

and mine have become

an epitaph

for a late November afternoon

when the last rays touched

the leaves, the grass the old teak chest,

and I forgot for a while

what an old painter friend told me:

Forms without ache, he said, are futile.

So be it. Though I would have it

otherwise.