15. At the Kumarakom lake resort in Kerala
A little white girl
crawls on the grass
Behind the sinuous
coconut tree
Chasing
a white-leaping rabbit.
16. Morning at my desk
My birds are twittering constantly
Amid scattered sounds and sun's rays.
My mornings are many-hued skies
Rising from treetops of bird-songs.
18. Death
At the end of the street
they all disappear
Where there is a blind turn,
a dead-end.
19. At the Kappad beach
Vasco Da Gama’s stone tablet stood
In history’s powdered rock and sand
And broken -colored boat masts.
20. On the Udayagiri hills near Vidisha
Several worn-out paths
winded to forgot ruins
There they stopped midway
vanishing in bushes.
21. Faith
That night was hope and some angst
While nothing ever happened , it would.
22. Flowers
The flowers would not talk to us
Of the pain of petals unfolding
When stars sprinkled dust on our roof
And the night’s queen whitely bloomed .
23. On the dry riverbed
The water was green and cool
Only the machines no longer whirred
And their men no more
Shouted in the wind.
24. Buffaloes on the riverbed
Everything was the same,
even the buffaloes
And their eyes were vacant
as always.
25. The grass
The grass swayed gently on the bed
When the wind called in the noon.
27. Good morning, Mumbai
The roads were picture-perfect with rocks
overflowing
Haji Ali mysteries near the winding flyover
Car horns meshing with crow's caws.
28. My morning in Mumbai :
My morning came back
full of feisty crows
Fed on Mumbai garbages
and fetid sea-fish
Of the harbor’s heights.
38. Bush
When you walk alone under the stars
The night bush exists separate from you
Just a speck of black ,for a while.
39. At the Chomillah palace in Hyderabad
Their men’s bloated egos did not show on their
faces
Their egos showed on the women’s stomachs
On the little heirs who came from there.
40. At the Chomillah palace in Hyderabad
When the silks arrived they forgot
women’s faces
The women sat gossiping about
other women
Other women in harem and their fine draperies.
41. Sultans and their faceless women
The women's drapery
Interrupted their noses
And seeing eyes
Under vaulting domes
And resounding halls.
42. On a hot day in Orcha
There is a chimera on the tarred road
A woman with a metal pot on head
Poetry strikes in the whir of the head
A body posture replying.
43. The prostate enlargement
As love’s summers passed for wintry nights
The joke is now on me prostate and falling
And now I try to make pretty poetry out of it.
44. The E.C.G.technician
A white ghost with a tail in his neck
Watched the geometry of my heart
On the flatness of a luminous world .
45. Jealous
They do not harm ,these green snakes
But their slither-feel is so much disagreeable
And they merge so effortlessly in her shadows.
46. The lovers
At night she burrowed her face in the pillow
As they dreamed together their joint dreams
And some times their separate dreams.
49. The train journey
Images crowded like people ,in the mind
As the noisy train fan whirred pointlessly.
50. My mother
All the while we chant strange words
That mean nothing to us or to her
Our words are ashes ,our love ashes
A bag of of yellowed bones .
51. My mother's death
River noise and river silence
Swept by leaning trees and rocks
Carry ashes of our living since dead.
52. The other woman
At dusk cream-colored mosquito-nets
Hid shadows coalescing into each other
Outside the autumn leaves fell
Carpeting the garden floor.
53. An old man's reverie
I dream of what lay
beyond those mountains
Of the gusts of howling wind
passing through
Swaying red sandalwood
trees on the other side.
54. I am sometimes afraid of the all-enveloping
darkness
Darkness closing in slowly amid the staccato cries
Of noisy crickets from invisible crevices
I am sometimes afraid of the all-enveloping
darkness
Darkness closing in slowly amid the staccato cries
Of noisy crickets from invisible crevices
Old
I am sometimes afraid
of the fearful darkness
darkness closing in slowly
amid the staccato cries
Of noisy crickets
from invisible crevices.
55. childhood
in the morning, when
the white birds in the sky
Whizzed past the tall
palm trees behind our house
We called them out
shaking our fingers at them.
56. Meeting the mentally challenged kids in Tirupati
Streamlets of consciousness
That do not form a river
But disappear into the vast
Wild wastes of nothingness.
57. My father
Cant you see him there
In the morning , when the sky
Is bare of white fluffy clouds
And in the blue distance
Mountains pile one on the other?
58. The fat book
The fat book on the table
opened its mouth
With wide-eyed wonder
at the trellis of shadows
On the marble floor
cast by the chandeliers.
59. Love in Kerala
The French windows hid much beauty
In the shadows of mosquito nets
Outside ,hot pepper creepers snaked
All the way up statuesque teaks .
60. At the Kapady beach in Kerala
Thought heralded a boatful of laughter
Checkered, courageous, fishermanly
In sprinkle-diffused froth
seething with salt and blue .
61. Transience
We smugly wear
the polyester film
of transience about us
we read poetry
in the trivial tragedies
of their tatters.
62. the plastic curtain
Between us falls
this plastic curtain
With tiny floral prints
and glistening droplets
I see your lips moving
through its translucence
63. On a pleasure boat in the Bhopal lake
shadowy figures enact
transience in lake's night
their dance flows
in absurd movements
their shadows crouch
in flesh and blood transience
64. My fellow-passenger in the train
Energy swelled within her
In waves after waves
Only to break, boisterously,
On rocky shores of bleak nothingness.
65. The textile designer I met in the train
Her shapes, not still forms,
But frenetically moving images
Sizzled and then vaporised
In split-second transience
Everything moved towards a stance
A fixed identity for her soul.
66. My mother's silk saree
Somewhere in the backwoods
Several industrious silkworms
Had spun miles of salivary yarn
In the foliage of the mulberry tree
To make this five-yard silk saree .
67. The bride's silks
The rustle of the silk drowned
The wails of the boiling cocoons
These worms died that beauty would live
In their plaintive cries lay new
bridal hopes
68. My mother's bridal silks
Her bridal fragrance lives on among
The delicate folds of these gossamer silks
That the worms had died weaving
Death is so fragrant and so memorable
69. The iron mines of Hospet
In the recent monsoon
Our rivers felt as if
The mountains had bled
From fresh wounds
Their flesh has gone,
Across the green seas,
To the distant Chinaman
To fill out his bones.
70. Shadows
The shadows were cool liquid and sensuous
Dense in the core but undefined in the edges
They touched your heart , tingled your skin
Tousled your hair and teased your mind.
71. My own little moon
In my childhood my moon
Hid behind a coconut tree
A skyscraper in America
now hides it .
