DAUGHTER

(To Sabitha, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis)

I see my thirty-year old daughter
again as a six-month old.
I bathe her, wash away
the dust and muck
of thirty years.

Now she glistens like
a short Amichai poem
in the liquid glow of Heaven.
The little towel
gets wet with Time.

Beethoven raises his
more than human hands
turning the window-bars
into piano-keys.

My daughter
emerges out of a symphony
to hug me with
her rose-soft hands.

Outside, rain’s bihag:
Kishori Amonkar.

In Memory of a Swedish Evening

(To Lars Lundqvist)

With steady hands
you went on pouring the
ruddy autumn in my goblet.

You read your poems
bright like the maple leaves,
filling the air like a Brahms symphony,
-sipping one mouthful for each line.

I translated your birds and trees into
my birds and trees.

Nouns revealed their core.
Verbs were inert.

There was a meadow
in your coat pocket.
I called out to the Western Ghats,
as if it were a hungry sheep.

The wind was turning
the pages of an apple tree.
I inhaled my childhood.

As I looked on
you turned into a green train.
I boarded it and whistled like the rain.
We left behind the church of the chill.
Words rubbed against words.

When beasts get into language
The dead burst into laughter.

MUSIC AFTER JOHN CAGE *

Birds chirp.
Silence.
The murmur of leaves.
Silence.
Low violin.
A door opens.
The clatter of pots and pans.
A washing machine’s whirr.
The whistle of a pressure cooker.
A woman whispering a song.
Silence.
Heavy footsteps coming closer.
A woman’s muted scream.
Plates and glasses drop and break.
Something falls down with a thud.
Fleeing footsteps.
A car engine starts.
The car speeds away.
Silence.
Birds chirp.
The murmur of leaves.
Silence.
Blood streams
from under the closed door.
Blood plays the guitar.
Blood beats the drums.
A bat flutters its wings.
The sound of a cello
drowned by a man’s laughter.
A baby’s loud cry.
Blood chases the spectators.
Bicycle bells.
Vehicles’ horns.
Peddlers’ shouts.
The sound of a knife
being ground on the whetstone.
It grows sharper and louder.

*John Cage (John Milton Cage Jr., 1912-92), the pioneer of ‘chance music’ that uses random sounds along with instruments often used unconventionally, famous for compositions like 4’33”. Inspired by Zen Buddhism and I Ching. Also created visual poetry and contributed to modern dance and electronic music. Author of many books like Silence, Empty Words etc.

THE CORPSE

There was a bottle of holy water
from the Ganga on my grandpa’s shelf.
A corpse floated on the water.

I tried to change the bottle
to get rid of the corpse; but
every time the corpse tagged along.
My grandpa gasped his last before
he had time to be chastised by the water –
one more member in the
crowded club of the unsaved.

Only when the kids, merry after a shower
cried, ‘this bottle stinks’ and flung it away
did I realize I could have
done this a lot earlier:
at least the corpse in the bottle
would have attained moksha.

We need a new route to salvation
that does not reek of corpses.

Obituaries

Dialogue

Your eyes open wide,
cheeks puff up
jaws part
tongue curls up
lips quiver and at last
hurt and limping
comes out a word
I fail to decipher.

Abuse

It was when
similes began to limp
we went out looking for images.
The images have now
gone blind, and
metaphors, deaf.

Dumb, poetry roams begging
along the streets of language.
In the midnight of loud music
the market abuses her.

Justice

“I regret; I wish to rewrite my life”,
before he could complete,
the noose tightened
around his neck.
None of the witnesses
spoke of justice.

Before Man

Before Man,
the Beast used to speak;
before the Beast,
the Tree, before the Tree,
the Mountain, before
the Mountain, the Sea
and before the Sea, the Sky.

Then it was Man’s turn,
and Everything ceased to speak.
Man’s heavy Voice
rattled and rolled
up and down their Silence.

Don’t you notice,
at the burst of dawn,
blood, on Everything?