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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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]

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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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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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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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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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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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