To be an Artist among Other Things

The night when the artist,
Heavy-hearted,
Bore his crying child outside,
He noted
That the baby’s eyes
Caught the reflection of the starry sky,
And each suspended tear
Made a sparkling moon.

APPOINTMENT WITH THE SALVING SYBIL

APPOINTMENT

A smile died on her dusky face

as her bird picked my tarot-card.

She twitched in her sharaai; said:

“Watch the faithless word –

breaking the watch and ward –

catching you all off guard:

you strike, grovel, demur,

but still it nails you down

with all those vacuous vows,

debts deferred, pledge forgone

to end it once for all".

A smouldering new nakedness

devoured the old magical clothes;

I hobbled back from oracles

And laid me in a mummy-case.

The dusk that ominously hung

Outside the sinister windows

Blends one drop more of poison

into the violet horizons.

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the painting: Paul Klee's Magic Mirror (1934)

Whenever She Kisses Me

Whenever she kisses me –

I keep my eyes steadfastly shut:

Lest the confused dendrons wince

At her slowly perching face,

Knowing all the way, it is

The same as one who long since died.

(POR) TRAIT

Wired to the world I sit.

Weighing a few extra memories,

Clueless of these ancient shadows,

The juggernaut of flesh, I, sit.

And in silver slits, my dreams split.

NOSTALGIA

The dust swept over the harvested field putting it to a dull sleep

And withdrew with the wind into a scraggly bush.

I was very happy as a child –

Far away from this baking Sun.

In the evenings, I used to swing on the hanging bunyan roots

Till dusk perched coolly on my shoulders.

Anesthetic coolness

of the plateau-evening.

I remember how in the evenings

we wore the rain all the way home from school,

Mouth and eyes gaping open, running against the striking rainthreads,

My vision always smarted till late night in monsoons.

The dead-snake road winds ahead,

Beyond the sparsely leaved trees.

It felt good to fall in love back at my place.

I remember how she fluttered and then shut her eyes

as our faces started to blur in an intense proximity.

It’s dusk in the head.

I listen to the dizzy procession of waves

In a sea that I haven’t seen now for years.

I wasn’t looking till the rain smuggled back in its entirety

All the ghosts to my hostel walls, in spreading water-blotches.

I sleep with naked nightmares

Breeding in miraculous fuss

Maggot-like memories

That crawl up to my windows,

Tap, sigh and wait for a reply.

I am tired.

Oh, to think

The silliest illusion

Is the hardest to lose.