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Saturday 3 December 2011

Ode to Waiting

I want to know its colours,
the play of shade,
the ambience of waiting
and keeping someone waiting,
i want to knows if it has form,
whether line and space
define or obscure,
i want to know its garments,
and if they are stitched
with moon-thread,
embroidered with ripple and
washed with wind,
i want to know
if these hours of sleeplessness
give birth to sigh or smile or both
and if other unknown things
are yielded,
i want to know,
girl at the other end of a tenuous
and invisible line,
whether these words
scented with mystery and knowing
arrive as garland
or as intoxicant
or as poison,
and if
when you breathe them,
you fly or collapse.


[From the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]

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Friday 2 December 2011

Incapacitation

For you I have no words
no perfect metaphors
that pin down intangibles
into pattern and identity.
For you are not defined
not named
not captured in line and space,
word and silence;
no, you move like a shadow
and a mountain.
without intrusion
without notice.
i don't know where you go,
or in what dimensions of heart and mind
that you receive me.
i know, though,
that you exist
and this alone
gives me the right to breathe
the right to wait.
from lifetime to lifetime,
century to century,
until you come,
like a morning that dances with twilight,
an intersection impossible
except in a country called Love.

[from the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]



Thursday 1 December 2011

Storm-love

men die at sea
but that's no deterrent
to fisherfolk;
men die in bed
and yet there is sleeping
and love-making.
that's an old fishernan's tale,
these are wind-swept days,
not days of gentle breeze
but vessel-wrecking days
days of sea-loss
and land-grief,
days when trees bend
and it's too wet for dust to trade
insult or joke with the wind.
And yet
there was a leaf that turned and turned
and turned and turned
on earth and just above.
maybe it was a whisper
or a prayer
something ancient
slipping through fingers
and staying in heart.
strange for a stormy day,
i thought. 
no, didn't complain
and not complaining now
either.

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Wednesday 30 November 2011

Ode to Telephones

A skewed and skewing instrument this,
poor, underdeveloped and weak
as most things technical tend to be,
made for uni-dimensionality,
just voice.
but communication
is about context,
the pieces of sky falling around us,
wind in the hair that is sentence and thought,
leaves made of earth, made of ambience
                                           and a teeming metropole,
gaze,
the texts sans word and metaphor,
gesture,
the play of fingertips, lips and such
and silence of the proximity
has eloquence beyond compare
than silence of distance.
telephones are useful things
for the 'now' if not 'here'
among human beings
separated by mountain and sea,
not for us,
no.

[from the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]

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Tuesday 29 November 2011

Last night

We talked of wind, of flower and song,
of gardens and fruits,
territories walked
regions trespassed,
uneven earth, broken continents
places unvisited by cartographer and cartography.
Conversation moved like wind and water,
redefining contour
as landscapes we crafted
with the flawed tools of the heart.
We chiselled away with questions and fear
time and life,
experience and longing.
And in the oceans within,
wave-lengths collapsed
and our lungs
full of words and silence
breathed out a miniature universe
made of you and I,
warm with the immemorial dreams
of conscious insomniacs. 

[from the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]

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Monday 28 November 2011

For the faraway one

Distant girl,
tell me,
as you move
in preferred orbits
do you encounter constellations
as yet unmarked on celestial maps,
are u bathed in stardust
and moonlight,
does it glance off your heart
in unbelievable angles?
are you accompanied by angels
or other-worldly butterflies
with luminous wings?
in that vast silence
does memory abandon you,
do you not hear melodies
forbidden in galactic commerce,
is movement slow
or dizzyingly fast?
tell me,
intangible being
that shines and blinks and disappears
and returns again and again,
are there flowers up there where you belong,
and tell me also
what brand names mark the perfumes
you will not share with me?

[from the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]

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Sunday 27 November 2011

I was once mountain

I was a mountain once,
and not too long ago,
but now I am sand.
Time and people
like wind and water took away.
I had lost myself in bits and pieces at a time,
and at times entire chunks,
but I remained a mountain,
identifiable,
a mass shaken and yet unvanquished,
until a massive explosion deep within
shattered,
disrupted the known ways of movement and dissolving,
set fire to familiar transcripts,
washed away convenient equations.
Yes, that was after you took root
when your roots cut through clay
when your fires melted all shape-giving, identity-preserving adhesives, 
and your waters dissolved thought and memory.
Yes, I was a mountain once,
and not too long ago,
but I am sand now.
And as dust, I now move
with wind and water.
I settle on cityscapes and move with rivers,
I line pathways that are ignored or unthinkingly trampled.
I was mountain once,
and then was seen;
I am dust now,
and go unnoticed.
But from rooftop and leaf,
from riverbed and noonday clamour,
through breeze, with rain,
I walk this world.
Yes, as particle.
I was a mountain once,
and not too long ago either,
but now I am sand.
And somehow I do not feel diminished.

[From the collection 'The Underside of Silence', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2008]

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