ELEMENTS AND US

You are the earth

And I the sky.

 

You send me your birds

Every once in a while;

I give them the clouds

The Sun and the wind.

 

I send you my rains

Every once in a while;

You give them the thirst

The song and a Sea.

DESCRIBING

I'm trying to describe how I feel

When you take leave of me

At the end of the day

And I see a brown bird breaking

Out of lone clouds

With full throated calls

Wings majestically still

And my hands like ants' tentacles

Searching to comprehend the largeness

Of a strange thing that fills the void

Move up the air in front.

And I'm trying to describe how I feel

When you take leave of me

At the end of the day.

NAME

I hear you call it again.

I have lent it to some before,

Kept it from some,

And though rarely,

Even changed it for some.

I had put it letter by letter in boxes,

And made totems out of it.

But after the excursions

It always came back like

A sullen and silent child.

A history more proper than its bearers’,

An essence deeper than a lifetime of wear:

A name always keeps to itself half its secret.

Time in spate froths off its silt on a name –

A fine silt that glistens in the sun,

Throbs in the rain, and hardens in winter.

You weeded it

And sowed a dandelion;

See, it has sprung again – 

Each silvery down in its fluff

Alert, glowing, as you call it.

I hear you.

WRITE

The witching hour past, the night grows sane.

The wisps of yellow sun pulseless remain

Enclosed in bluish pods half-poignant:

The dreamless slumber of tired children.

Now, toss the amber bead of poetry,

Quip, exorcise the womb of memory.

THE NIGHT BUS

A street winked

Darkness

The fading smear of a wall.

A darting bridge.

A lonely dog.

Hurrying asphalt.

A company of smokers.

It is hard to come to terms with:

the world only absently watches

as I, windowed, nightwards vanish.

Out of the Sea

The wave of your silence crawls over

And bites

On the candescent sands

And ebbs –

                   With a half-moon off my heart.