Quantum, Quarter, Quartz OR Ephemera and assorted fables.
(What is in a name?
- a lot, almost everything
except time.)
Inter alia
I care to admit
I like your hair
amorphous beehive
imploding
into a thousand
polaroid lilies
in the sun.
Long moments
turn themselves up
before the winds
living in the trees
cut loose winter
and a mischief
of metaphors.
What is your name?
2008
The solitary line
Euclid drew
with a dead twig
has one sad end
under my mute bed.
The other end
is under your feet
If I may say so
one side step away
(from the Euclidean line)
there is sun
and summer
of the origins.
And the tree
around the corner
has leaves of exactitude
and meanings
that are ripe ahead
of the season
falling
with mild bursts.
On the other side
is autumnal calm
in the citadel
under the siege
of bridesmaids.
Before the knot
tightens
around the rooster’s neck
there is time for
another round of applause.
Drawing at this point
the only possible
line parallel to the first
the enemies sat down
for the feast.
( ______________ )
2007
Long past
mid day
the shore
is a slender
glistening arm
felt by
the white foamy
tongue
of perfect sea.
Mirror in hand
a dwarf moves
one foot at a time
among pilgrims
prophesying
the apocalypse.
There is no death
for the birds of winter.*
No cemeteries.
In the warm navel
of the sea
from a time before god
a wind
stitches perpetually
one moment
and the other
at precise ruptures.
From the lithe grove
of the afterglow
the dwarf
reappears and vanishes
with his crafts of
ancient voyages
crashing on the waves
in one sudden rush.
The procession of pilgrims, on reaching the sea, sings in unison, no epitaph is worth the dead, no buried ever remembers his name, or hers, the winds are blowing all the clouds away, over the lighthouse and the dusk, over the ships and the masts, the night of cicadas, the night of disquiet, is waiting like a pirate of pure lore, waiting for glory, at these hours waves upon waves, I call myself by my name.
2007
* I chanced to read this line among graffiti and bill boards at Fort Kochi, in December 2007, though the author of this line remains anonymous to me.
Cicadas,
millipedes
from the backyard
of plants
and ponds
die
on the cot
of leaves
laid
inside my pocket,
scorched
by the noon sun
or
crushed
by my grip
on an oversized
trouser,
that always smelled
of mushrooms,
milk
and moist wood.
Post script:
perhaps it was
(or perhaps not)
the summer
when I first felt
the unnerving heaviness
of sentences
that report death.
2006
The fable of the blue whale’s army
is one of seasonal returns
to spent summers of light and play,
of match-box forts and backyard seas
whose waves reach the kitchen,
and sinking the shadows
of the sonorous utensils,
of my mother at work,
quietly, unlike themselves, slip
into my room,
into its dark corners
and abate,
forming an infant island
out of the bed I lie on, having
escaped my name
into a distant, echoless sleep.
Awake, amidst the disquiet
of the tropics, the wind
among the teak leaves,
ripe beans of coffee
palm fronds, green fans,
I narrate the fable
to cousins,
all impassioned fabulists,
unsuspecting yet fearful.
Sea horses, octopuses,
whales miles long,
now forgetful and venerable,
bathed in the sun
in these teakwood jungles
that was a long,
long while ago
a frightening ocean.
But fear not,
on the seas,
they sink ships, devour sailors
and burp loud earthquakes,
on sundays, there they come
octopuses with flags,
eight of them,
seahorses and spears,
whales with cannons,
to the market
when all the fish in the sea
are caught in the fishermen’s nets.
2006
an old map
made to a scale
of medieval anguish,
left behind after
the great conquest,
is circling now
over balconies,
over flowerpots
and lowered blinds,
gliding low
among the clotheslines,
settling now
and winding its way
down the door,
that old map
from yesterday
without a tense,
neatly folded and sealed
with fern dust,
lost and found
under the door
eager to take residence
among the papyri
of unspeakable mishaps
that we have inked,
despite ourselves.
2007
Alberto Santos Dumont
invented the airplane
on a hot summer
afternoon,
about ten to two.
Mid air, swaying
like a paper kite,
he felt warmer
than always,
and a nerve twitched
on his eyelid.
He felt, he saw
ceramics glistening
from a cafe` window
in Paris, far away
like enameled clouds.
Floating above trees
he imagined stars
to be luminous fish,
swimming
above the clouds,
then perhaps, fish
to be stars fallen
among the waves.
With an eye on Cartier’s
time beating on his wrist
Santos Dumont
descended, gently.
He spoke nothing.
He wanted a steaming
cup of coffee.
He had clocked
twenty three moments
floating,
closer to the sun
and the gods.
2006
