And one day
when applause has died
and the delighted have burdened
tired streets with leaden feet,
when wings imagined are recognised
when the earth seems too small a platform
when you’ve surprised the sun,
then, in a mirror made of a Tuesday
or a month erroneously erased,
every dance choreographed
and those yet unborn
will in suspended disbelief confess
‘We were in your eyes blueprinted.’
[Pic by Prishan Pandithage]
Verse-hair braided with fairy lights
crafted nonchalance dripping
in the pitter-patter of footfall
accidental and deliberate —
I look up
there’s the assured light
from the geometry of windows
but she will put the staircase to work
with or without warning
as I may have too
in her fairytale days
and my absent years.
There’s something citric about you
something king-coconutty too
flavors and colors
were all the fragrance there was —
cuts through enormities
grinds to a fine powder
time’s voluminous harvest
calls forth a history
or just a word
such as what swirled around tongues
rested delicately on lips
so fragile
not even a thousands kisses
could displace.
At the edge of a feeder-canal
the ghosts of mee trees felled long ago stood
and as though nudged by an andaheraya
remembered by one and all at once
released rustling melodies
which duly reincarnated
as bleeding fingertips;
delicately lifted the paddy field
rolled it all the way to the tree line
heaved up upon a collective shoulder
and to the heartbeat of a resilient land
marched straight into the pages of tomorrow —
such things are possible on wind-shredded mornings
bringing news of resurrected optimism.
So she wakes me at 3 o'clock
wakes me to coffee and home
wakes me again a little later
and the coffee's still warm
strays from her universe
with word and grace
dressed as bandit or clown --
I notice all
and so much more
in this domesticity unanticipated
but welcomed like a child
walking into fairy tale anthologies.
Times of confidences come to me
as gardens from another planet
unnamed but clearly mapped
with libraries and books
songs and stories that would at will
break into flavors that soothed our tongues
and cured it of the harsh-word curse.
The claims of seniority and equality of status
length of knowing and love,
of poetry, places, phases and passion
did not count;
I belonged to her, through and through
then and forever, non-negotiable.
But we slipped, she and I
into orbits that seldom crossed paths
and were shrugged off
in the nonchalance of knowing
or things more pressing.
Old words torment the vacancies
threadbare histories nibble
and the edges of memory wince
in the inevitability of this time.
And then skipping through a paddy field
uncluttering doubts with fairytale swish
she sprinkles the universe
with an eau de cologne smile.
She has always taken care
to take care of me.
Raindrops wearing bird-song shoes
intermittently measured cobblestone byways,
a ghost train whistled to a ship without sailor —
the wind told the ghost guard ‘undeliverable’
and the ghost engine driver told the railway track
‘we know better, don’t we?’
An encyclopedia opened to an empty page,
poetry flew from a television screen,
the turmeric turned in silence in accommodating soils,
burnt out matchsticks decided to set up camp
and a caterpillar in a faltering voice asked
‘can I stay in your plantain peel tent until the night is done?’
A lipstick stain danced around the rim of a glass
a gaze turned red wine into white
and memory-blush made it crimson, by and by;
some words were probably said, but I am not sure
for there is no stall for convictions
in the carnival of the vague.
