ON WET GRASS
That footprint on the wet grass
need not be death’s;
perhaps a folksong had gone by.
The butterfly quivering on your palm
has something to tell you.
How long had the mangoes
and jasmines awaited your hands
to stop them from falling!
Don’t you hear the sea whisper,
debts are not to be repaid?
Even your dark little room
has a piece of sky.
Everything is blessed:
fish, cicadas,
sedges on your yard,
sunlight, lips, words.
AT TIMES
At times, it is good to laugh,
even the moment before
you take your life,
for, the sun survives you;
fishermen set their tiny boats
on the raging sea;
the drowned man’s clothes
learn to fly about the riverbank;
a man and woman blossom
into heaven from the bed of misery;
a boy riding the noon
dreams of caparisoned elephants;
a girl breathes in orange blossoms,
and slowly turns into a breeze;
a homebound bird
deposits four blue eggs
and a star in the twilight; a Saigal
trembles like the moon in a river;
a poem slips past a banyan tree,
hiding its face in an umbrella;
a raindrop turning into
an emerald on a colocasia leaf
remembers Kunhiraman Nair.
THOSE WHO GO
Let them go, who want to;
turn your eye towards those
who remain. Look into the mirror:
an angel watches you from within,
whispering to you in your
own voice, ‘Live, live on’.
Listen to silence;
it is an uproar —
a cascade, like your beloved
bursting into laughter,
stroking her hair backward;
the dance of leaves;
the wind’s anklet; the song of survivors
from beyond the river; the new year
arriving with a round of claps,
and flowers hanging from its ears.
There is no yesterday, nor tomorrow;
only the doors of today opening
to the sky. And, smells, too:
wet hay, grain boiling,
rain-washed earth, elanji flowers,
serpent’s eggs,
the mysterious secretions
of trees and men.
I will not sleep tonight,
nor will I let you.
TWO POEMS OF LOVE
NAINI
(Nainital, 10 June 2004)
This lake is Parvati’s eye
open towards Kailas.
This blue carries
the penance of a lifetime’s love.
Fish and boats
cut across these liquid dreams.
Trees see in it their future.
The wind murmurs in my
ears a rustic song in Pahari.
Among these mountains,
I love you all the more.
This chill burns me.
Back in the room
I have a Third Eye.
This is instinct:
I know how beasts climax.
I grow an elephant’s trunk
in the lustful memories of woods.
We need a black baby
to seize the scent of
vanishing flowers and sway
its ears to the lost rhythms
of native drums.
I regret
having burnt Kama.
YOUR LIPS
Your lips are red-hot.
I kiss them;
they turn my lips into a burning noon.
Your lips are an oozing honeycomb.
I stroke them;
a thousand wasps besiege my heart.
Your lips are the flushing dawn of my dreams.
They touch my eyes
that blink in the summer sun.
Your lips are acidic quills.
They sculpt your name on my brow,
forever.
Your lips are the tornados of June.
They pass over my body, and rouse
dust, water, poetry. At once.
Your lips are this coast and the other.
I tremulously launch my tongue
onto the torrent between them.
Your lips are a pair of red sparrow wings;
my lips soar on them
to the eternal blue.
Your lips are the banks of the red sea.
I sit meditatively on them
watching the west set.
Your lips are birth and death.
My being is stifled between them.
I pass from this world to the other
along the red bridges of your lips.
Your lips are silk, or
the essence of rose, or rainbow, or wind.
Water, blueberry, feather, ecstasy.
From between your lips come
love, fire, spring, moonlight,
children, breast milk.
Your lips are sa and sa;
between them lie the seven notes,
crescendo and decrescendo,
all those ragas, named and unnamed.
Your lips are alpha and omega;
between them lie the alphabet;
all words.
I pick some of them with my lips
and put them together.
I call it a poem.
You call it love.
In truth, it is a soul,
a lean soul that comes out of the hellfire, burnt:
Dante, Paul Celan,
Edappalli,
I.
