Dawn

The morning star rolls on fading blue

(persistent as the dream of perfect love

born with the human mind).

Jasmines bob in the morning cool.

Night

The closing of a window

Is the downing of shutters on desire.

On rejection

Masquerading as temerity.

Take the morning for a walk

 1

Take the morning for a walk

for before you know he will grow into a scrambled young man

whose streets evaporate into diesel choked chaos of honking tin buses

sullen taxis and abusive autos

who now own the city roads

Streets that find themselves at dusk

on a bridge overlooking a drain that was once a river

seeking the shot of life from garish masks

that were giggling, school girls

once upon a time

Or in dark, smoky, blind lanes in slums

to seek respite in opiates

with shadows who become friends

            2

Or hold her hand and make her sit on your balcony

(fragrant with jasmines she had planted twenty years ago)

overlooking the waking street of your friend the crow

perched on the skeleton of your childhood

headless streetlamps.

Wrap her fragile, sleepless body with all your love,

reply to each question five times

patiently,

she had such unfathomable patience

for a helpless you in an unrecallable past

            3

Take the morning out for a walk

for, despite the greedy dwarves all around you

that pour filth on the day, all day and night

browbeating, tricking, the trusting true

for half understood, elusive, unsatisfying goals,

Maybe it will lead you to a golden afternoon

with butterfly girls

and happy tired sleep with

dreams of marbles and tops.

Understanding

Then the river

Plunged

And our nudity

Laughed.



Afterwards, the tree shadows

Slept on the banks

inside each other



Thoughtless.



And the night

Interrogated our dreams.







The morning woke from the fog

and the sun

from the river



And smiled

indulgent.

Passing

1

Streetlights wrapped in fog

The pavement mistakes nine for zero

Tall in dreadlocks and jeans

She passes

I turn to see her recede

The appointment of our previous loves

Lost in a turbulent crossing

poetry of my youth

I let her pass.

            2

In the auto queue

I do not understand the exchange of eyes

The breadth of her shoulders quiver

Her fingers are restless on her friend’s

and behind her back her fingers

speak in Tamil

Inside, her face flicks a turn,

and again

And my fingers seek darkness

At our destination

I pay my fare

She waits

DARJ - Oct, 2011

You talk of turmeric dust sunlight on fir trees

and I let you tell me once more

those old tales, of month long holidays

through winding lanes of cloud crossings,

of dew on your brow.



Darj was a fairy tale of infant clouds

coming in through our windows.

The discovery of chilled sweet milk

that I knew instantly as ambrosia.

Of the Glenary’s aroma that lifted one suddenly

on a sandpapered summer sunset at Connaught Place

from the anguish of loss of another day of youth.



71 took it to the promise of a life-style ad.

In fragile blue and white

overseen by the Gold Thigh Mountain

as that gold-winged sunset from Glenary’s.

(Imagined?) Were you there as her then?

Such would be youth and love ever after



We look for the steep lane

from the station to the Rest House

to the then remote south

in our separate memories of separate years.

Is this one it? Or this?

Hot milk and jalebis in foggy mornings

are probably sepia now. As we know

the day long toy train from NJP is.



Those old tales of memory finding

a place as it had left four decades ago,

(even in parts)

I begin to believe.

NOSTALGIA

A squirrel moves a wall to black and white and the electric clock. A girl’s head flits through a square of darkness between bare bricks on the first floor. A half window, boned, leaning. A creeper hammocks on the TV cable on a pearl and graphite sky.

Take me home.



Girls wear skirts again. Pujas in three weeks. I look for him with a shadow on the upper lip and yell, “Your mum won’t suffer your life.”



On the way to office, it looks like rain.

Freeing Love

You shall not cheat. I will

not be judged by Sahu the grocer.



I do. Not on earth or water

or gauzy winds in azure skies



But I do. So there.

My open upturned palms

I can look at you now

I can look at you

now in this winter of the hashish fragrance of the chhatim tree

That is everywhere.

That has swept away the cotton smell of my mother

And the milky scent of my woman

And the spunky odour of the sea

That trails the dark women of my madness



I can look at you now

That the silk cotton tree is naked



And through its branches



I can see

your crystalline solitude.