The Gathering Of Time --- Dialogues With Kalidasa
Varsha
" This season's rainy fingers puts leaves and blossoms on the forest...
slow- spreading low clouds sadden the hearts of lonely women. "
Kalidasa, Rithusamharama
Rain
Once
there was no horizon.
Sky and earth mingled
in a womb of rain
as you entered me.
Now I lie alone.
My vision clear.
My body rich
with memories
of passing showers.
(First published in Chandrabhaga, New Series, No. 12, India, 2005)
Poems From Babylon And Persia
--- after2 BCE to 2 CE Tamil puram war poems
Salma, pi-dog of Baghdad, says:
Americans are kind.
They leave blood on the streets
for us to lick,
and morsels of human flesh
stuck
to charred clothing.
They return us to our ancestors:
Wolves.
Salma's friend, pi-dog Imrana replies:
You don't hear and see so well
ever since the bomb went off in the neighborhood
dump where you had littered
six pups,
one-eyed, one-eared, scar- faced Salma.
Listen:
I've heard
the scene of feasting is shifting
overseas
and underground,
in tunnels long and deep.
And that the bombers talk in a language
we can understand, so to speak.
I'd trot there myself for the spread
if it weren't that I lack
front feet.
(First published in Soundings Issue 34, A journal of politics and culture, U K, 2007)
Refuse/ Refused
Fragments From Three Cantos
1.
Hahaha, he laughs, the bald boy, veteran rag-picker sitting on a pile of junk, toes splayed.
Around him strays snarl or sleep, his pets, his messengers from the world outside, bound
to this dump by its bounty. There's nothing you can't find here, he laughs, this mini lord of
litter, here's a part of a ladder to dreams, a broken keyboard to miracles, a magic shoe
with a hole in its sole, a silken bra of torn desires, and mountains of bags and more bags that
leak their stink as joss sticks offered to me. The city's memories are strewn
at my feet like flowers of pus. So much waste and so much want like the cut-up girl
in that bag near the car parts, she's refuse now 'cause she refused to sleep with him.
This is my kingdom come, this is your kingdom come; come, don't refuse your part of it...
First published in TRASH Alphabet City -MIT Press, Canada, 2007.
