Uncalled for
My ambition
Never found a
Watering hole;
or it would have died
the majestic death of
an Urdu poet
in the head of a
stupid acolyte.
Instead it died
on the Dadar platform
waiting for the Virar local.
Widows of Benares
(Based on a Henri Cartier Bresson photograph of the widows of Benares)
The calligraphy of silence
And concentric rings of water
Ebb and eddy, in
The black and white photograph
Of the widows of Benares.
Black and white
And no truth in between either,
Just a wash, a wash
Of moonlight; from
The unblinking bad eye
Of a sorrowful sky.
Like dimmer moons
The shaved heads catch
Their bit of light,
But one strains, and straining draws
With their wrinkles
Their deathwish on their cold faces;
The warmth of pyrewood.
The black and white picture
Also lies to me
Like a good reporter
Tells me no story; and coerces
My only story
Out of me. My widow
Is my mother.
No shaved head. No white
Saree. Not even a grand
Subject. For the art
Of black and white.
Just one more mother.
All art is another drug.
The shadow it casts
Into the dark, damp floor
Of my heart
Depends not on light,
But on the height of my threshold.
