Araliya

Explorers long ago
— or brigands, conquistadors or spice-bandits —
brought Plumerian gifts
beads for the heathens 
or a little piece of home 

We have since lost the name
and re-named:
The family Frangipani of Italy 
supplanted  the botanical monk Plumier 
but here in tropical lyricism 
the slip, supple grace inspired:
Ara-Liya, ‘that lass’

That lass
upon the branches
peeping over a wall
breaking curfews 
perfuming in subtleties unrecorded 

A flower correctly named 

Barefoot Testament

They say there are nodes
pinpoints on sole
each to an organ linked

Therapeutic 
it must be
so the practitioner says
in the physiology of belief 

Feet see what eyes do not
their deep conversations
with sand-grain and universe
are gathered by grass
which deftly slices 
sorts into beatitudes 
and like so many petals 
Carefully upon pavements lays 

The barefoot heart is raw
un-frilled ad uncluttered 
reads scriptures in silence
holds fraternal hands

Loves.

The Declaration of Grass

In the divine chronicles 
so-called and so-believed
the faithful transcribers 
placed The Word 
in elemental maps —
mountain they marked
rivers and other boundaries in flux 
duly peopled with king and coronation —
hosanna for conqueror 
footnote for infidel 
the rise of splendid cities
the inevitable crumbling to dust —
and upon it, in a corner, 
with ’Holy’ seal, marked


So bent, quashed and uprooted
by the engines of war 
the prophets never saw the grass

Neglected thus they conferred 
under monsoonal skies 
and around collaterals 
broken arrows, stained bandages  
charred footwear and nostalgia-shards
and decided for them and always:

‘For lovers and poets 
there will always be
and for them, and for their repose
as muse or papyrus  
so shall we.’ 

Sky

Someone in the long ago
in ecclesiastical shorthand
put god in his place
and the devil too:
banished evil 
to the bowels of the earth 
and the divine let loose 
in the amorphous atmospherical  

Someone in the long ago
in canonical zeal forgot
true residences 
of names, namer and named 

But from here on earth
a sky-slice can be seen by all
or by one or two
defining a straight line 
or two sides of a triangle   
carrying heart to heart
for a rendezvous nondescript
but nevertheless out of this world 

Peace

The benign Other of war
immemorial fixation of our tribe:
I have seen it gloss
the lips of tyrant and butcher 
in the aftermath of conquest 
and as badge and flag of objector 

But what of the world’s conundrums
battles over gold, oil and markets 
what of the indignant victim and insistent invader
when we declare war in the name of peace 
or declare peace as a synonym of belligerence 

what of lexicons 
battles over meaning
the raising of flags
over desolate uninhabitable land

when a moment
a word or glance that stays 
is peace enough?