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Saturday 7 April 2012

Drops!





They fall

they stay

they slip away

drip and disappear

they stain

leave mark on dust

and trace

again

again

again

ebb and flow

birth and go

of things delicate

and things hard

strong and weak

faithful and irreverent

colourful and dull

love and forsake

dismissal and embrace

and without word

or music

etches an old story:

where I came

and where I shall go

forget,

read me in this passing

that’s enough.



Friday 6 April 2012

The mother of all wars


 

Fighting is gender-neutral
even war, even men-men war
is femaled
for men take wife to frontline
take mother and daughter,
and war visits as anxiety and wail
but this war was differently femaled
for it came with fighting women
with some among them
made to explode;
but in the uneasy fleeing
from tyrant shooting to kill
into the arms of considered foe
timeless tenderness
was a flower that burst
through war-rubble,
a flower
easily crushed,
easily ‘warred’. 

Wednesday 4 April 2012

My father


(a note to Mitsi)


‘The old house is still standing’
I recite, and she asks
‘so why do you have to say it?’
I’ve never been questioned on this,
for the grasses of home were always green-green
even in the driest months
and unkempt seasons
and though the paint was cracked and dry
at times
there was nothing to explicate
home was home,
familiarities don’t come off the walls
like plaster does,
and that’s why my appachchi,
your ‘Polo Aththa’
is firmly defying
his infirmities;
he’s an old house
paint-cracked
but here the grass
is green-green
and will be
as and when
they all,
we all come
to see him.