Window Sill Notes (2020)
The kingfisher’s daydream: rivers under the sun –
rain has crept up the daydream like an ant.
The kingfisher bites raindrops: it will rain fishes soon.
An answer to the goldfinch’s notice in the lonely hearts column –
a mirror arrives by post.
He sees his mate dance the same, tireless roundelay of undying love
and isn’t lonely any more.
The ululation of morning –
streets like tangled arms of the grief-stricken
pull back the mortuary van –
the waterfowl by the pond pick up the notes:
afternoon ululates like morning.
Living in the interim of the imminent:
rain-shadowed, thunder-minted –
thunder that does not call,
rain that we notice only when it has already rained.
Lessons
I
One should learn
how to insinuate
speech
from a clock that has stopped
telling time,
although
its tongue is still wagging.
II
Light
is the slowest thing
in the universe.
Call out Physics
on its millennial fallacy.
Light
has lungs,
a liver
and a heart.
It breathes,
digests,
and lives to die
in cobwebs,
cradled in long afternoons
of old houses,
lost acquaintances of the sun.
III
Three lines
drawn in ash
across the breadth
of an all-seeing eye:
the temple of Shiva
painted
in the secret corolla
of a hill flower –
pale, purple, lonely,
outside a hill temple
waiting
for a bell-burst
all spring.
Teach yourself patience,
Painter!
His Fiftieth Birthday: A Proem
I am a terminal case.
Half-a-century
into my life
I have just read the doctor’s prescription
printed on a wall
between the dark of chocolates
and the white sands of a tropical getaway.
Now
I shall shop
for a look of such suffering
as I may not have cared to wear
before,
and find that key on the sidewalk
with which I briskly
unlocked the door
of the dream
I left this morning,
for another day.
Can I cry?
I am a terminal case.
