There, in God’s country, the benign ruler
Had promptly burst out of the earth’s bowels
A sea of coconuts smothered, sultrily,
The most unwilling moss-painted houses
The banyan raised its feet high enough
For hundreds of creepy monsoon-creatures
The journey then began in white rain
Waiting for streaks of silver sunshine
To crawl through upright areca nut barks
As the telephone wires went up and down
A floating bird quickly froze in the sky
First the coconut fronds ran to the hills
Then the chilly plants, yet to go red in the face
Inside, they of the uncertain sex beat the wind
Out of their joined palms in forced cadence
The floor-mopping boy under our large feet
Looked with money-wetness in his eyes
The train went spluttering for lack of puffing
While gravelly stones hit its forbidden parts.

Here, in October, scores of dragonflies
Fly about like miniature airplanes
Speckled butterflies collide with them
Floating in the air like catamarans
The morning slowly dries wet clothes,
Dripping, they smell of blue detergent
The house there wakes up bleary-eyed
Hesitating shadows emerge from the walls
A varnished gate, the midget of a woman
On the concrete bench, in the garden
Measuring the length of her shadow
A riot of bougainvillea bursts on the rock
Like a Chinese vase with fresh geraniums
Fresh coffee drip-drops into the percolator
Filling the air with delicious aroma
Amid all the blood and gore of newsprint
Soon you drift into a crimson forgetfulness.

The midsummer tin-roofed alphabet-school
Burst with thirsty crows and earthen pots
Long-gowned smoky-eyed phantom-teachers
Guided tiny fingers along chalked letters
The water glistened telltale in the bottom
Waiting for the crows to bend and breathe
Deeply over their gently moving reflections
The pebbles would take long time to drop
In the meantime a squeezed citrus leaf
Mingled its delicious smell perfectly with
The lazy crow’s caw on the branches
At the altar of the church I tried to find
The fragrance of my life’s beginning
In the sandal paste and burnt incense
Our pond smelled of the aromatic chemistry
Of wind over water and long lotus stems
At midnight dark burglars made oval holes
In the neighbor’s house with a shovel’s thud
In the afternoon scary policemen arrived
Hand-in-hand with ebony-backed thieves
The ghostly tamarind brooded in the night
Little tomato plants shone red in the corner
Our petite pig-tailed girl played peeved wife
On long summer nights the circus band played
The stars flickered in the chinks of the tent.

 

 

 

 

In those early lazy luminous days

Consciousness flowed unbroken

What went on in our little minds

Extended to the far horizons

The mountains had no veil of secrecy

And the lakes seemed crystalline

The vegetable creeper bloomed

In our backyard in yellow flowers

That seemed like so many full moons

We knew that soon there would be

Plump gourds on our thatched roof

We would watch growing every morning

The afternoons were red-hot and weary

The smell of charcoal in our kitchen-stove

Somehow connected to our daily lives.

We dug patches in our garden in the day

And when the dusk fell, planted little beans

Under the skin of the soaked earth

When we woke up the next day

Pretty sprouts broke out from the earth

We had not slept the whole night waiting.

We had covered the tumescent guavas

With white rags against marauding squirrels

We watched them grow bigger and bigger

Hour after hour , morning after morning .

At night when the jackals howled at the moon

We lighted our small fires of dry twigs

And stood with our cold palms against the fire

As giant shadows played on the backyard wall .

 

 

Silk-soft moonlight -shadows gyrated gently
On the terrace of my one-room tenement
Conical shadows of coconut branches
Falling ambivalently on the parapet wall
Criss-crossed with velvety moonlight rays
Ricocheting off the fragrant foliage of the
Jui creeper that rose from the ground to the roof
Silver-white tiny flowers dotted the dense foliage
Like flickering stars on the Amavasya night.
The shadows were cool liquid and sensuous
Dense in the core but undefined in the edges
They were not like the morning shadows
Warm and expectant under the April sun
They were not even like the afternoon shadows
Stentorian shadows striding behind you
They touched your heart , tingled your skin
Tousled your hair and teased your mind.

 

.

 

 

Tonight I shall climb the roof

And lick jellied moonlight there

Or catch flickering astral pieces

And put them in my shirt-pocket

When I walk in dark paddy-fields

I shall be taken for a will-o-the wisp

Along mud-tracks the thorny bushes

Shall wear a black veil of darkness

I peep into the dark, steep step-well

And lower the pail tied to the rope

To gather broken pieces of moon.

Six a.m. the bulbul arrived
Our backyard worms forgot
It was his breakfast time.

In my childhood my moon
Hid behind a coconut tree
A skyscraper in America now hides it .

At nightfall the pretty Ganges wore
A black sequinned satin dress
And a splendid necklace studded
With luminous still images
Of candle-like lights on the bridge
The flickering flame of the lantern,
In the boat ,refused to dance
To the passing wind’s death-tune
Touching the jetty stood ,motionless,
A steel-and-wood monstrosity
Brooding over its loneliness
Its cavernous stomach ached with
The darkest secrets of the high seas .