The many voices

After a night wrestling with impotent gods,
and acts of hollow defiance.
After a night drifting on driftwood that
left me shriveled as dried leaves on my bed.

When, from a few streets above,
like a chariot gathering pace
the muadhdhin lifts his voice,
first in little steps, proceeds
in deep intonations to rent the flaming sky.
The azan is scarce but over, when
from a few streets below,
the gentle chime of temple bells.

Walking about Landour at dusk.

A warbler hops from rock to rock along a bubbling brook,
that slips, slaps, slops around slippery rock – green with old English moss.
It turns to enquire, tail a-shake.
A smoky wood-burn’s lazy ascent,
lost between the deodars. While a flea-bitten sentinel squats beside
his flea bugged companion, sucks his cheroot.
Listen how the blue jay cries.

In that spectral light, Gabriel bowed with bunched wings,
silent and still among the steles,
Time’s cobwebs link the tips of his wings
beside a limestone white chapel on that hill.
Dry and nameless bones, far from
the chalk cliffs of Dover.
Now obedient, they lie brittle and bleached,
beneath a slow setting Himalayan sun.

What the seashell saw…

The hissing surf, breaking on some nameless shore,
razing imprints of a hermit crab,
bearing treasures from the womb – limp horses, laurel’d weed, starred corral.
In the heaving sea, floating like grains of rice,
the islands arose before their weary eyes.

Whorled ear tossed amidst moss cloaked rock
gleaming in the phantom moonlight.
Phosphorous eyes amidst a steaming profusion,
beneath a starry velvet sky – watches.
Coursed by a wind that bends coconut palms.

Not a fallen star upon the breakers, a bobbing star no less,
draws nether, spray skeining across her prow.
Eye nor whorled ear can comprehend,
grunts, that final heave, arms, legs
and barking dogs.

They strike a fire,
strike a spike amidst the flares, and
run a head through that pike,
invoke nameless gods.
Hop to the beat of a naked drum,
mingled sweat, ochre and fresh warm blood.
Pointing eye and spear heavenwards, they
mark the ardors of a long crossing.