Abandonment
Like a hapless mother
Waiting in hiding for someone
To pick up, offer a peck and carry home
The baby she had abandoned
Fresh with blood from her womb,
I lay my poem naked on the street
And wait, listening to its first cries
Until it becomes yours,
Hoping that one day
She might recognise me
And love me or curse me.
The Beast of Words
I am a beast of words.
Be warned: any moment
I may pounce upon you.
Eyes are the part I relish most,
Eyes that look deep into the heart of things.
I walk slowly, silently,
On the soft paws of letters,
Hiding myself, leaving
Only my pugmarks.
In the dense woods of language
I crouch and await my prey.
In the half-lit jungle,
An experience suddenly makes its appearance
Looking for words.
I catch hold of it, bite and shake
And chew it until only the bones are left.
At times, the blood may splatter
And stain your face too, with
All its hues and smells.
The meat may stick to your mind,
As memories and images.
Then I retreat,
Hide in the dark, until
The next experience arrives,
Looking for a dictionary that
Lights up the night.
The Girl on the Seventeenth Floor
I stay on the seventeenth floor.
The moon can see my solitude.
But I cannot touch her sky.
I can see the sea below.
Inside it too there is a sky.
Behind me is a sea of slums.
There is no sky there.
My violin resounds on both sides.
My weeping too.
Both speak the same tongue.
There are no flowers anywhere.
The painted city stretches in front of me
Waiting for her night-visitors.
2
I can now see a desert growing
At a distance.
It was all green, with
A lake at the centre
Full of water-lilies.
It was in front of our eyes
That the desert was born,
And the sand from the dried-up lake
Came ashore.
It ate up all green like a pre-historic beast.
Only the skeletons of plants
And trees were left on the sand.
3
One day this sea too will
Turn into desert.
I can see it coming up with the wind
To take over my seventeenth floor.
And devouring the whole city.
Then I will turn into a cactus.
A flower, reluctant, will bloom on me.
Around it there will appear
Honeybees, bears,
Green-hued humans
Under green stars.
