After Reading Po Chü-i

1

Long marriages make long cracks

and the one in the roof

is too wide for a sealant.

Leave it alone.

Half a hop

and the babbler’s

found some nibbles,

and the squirrel’s tried

to put its hand inside

the biscuit jar.

Everywhere, houses coming up,

the sound of hammering

like steady rain.

The roof’s leaking again.

2

We live in three cities,

in houses with gardens

and trees of a great age.

The gardens

go through their changes.

In winter, the willow sheds

its leaves; in the rains,

climbers take over the walls.

Birds come all year round.

We’re still looking for a patch

of ground where we can spread out

a handkerchief and sit awhile.

3

You know the halts:

Fatehpur, Sirathu, Khaga;

never the distance

between two the same.

Going away, the wheels

turn slowly; returning,

they cannot spin

fast enough.

4

Two rights

and a left,

then a straight road

through the bazaar,

and she’ll be there.

All too unbelievable:

the directions,

the route,

the distance;

and all too real.

5

The bookmark I gave you,

contemporary, has melon slices;

yours, from a scroll,

is by an Edo artist.

Randomly, red poppies and all,

I move it to another page,

then to another.

It’s also magnetic.

6

Tree you are,

a squirrel I,

scrambling up

your knees.

Then the roles

are reversed.

“And all this

is folly

to the world.”

7

Only in familiar places

is one lost.

The backyard wilderness

is a clump of trees:

camphor, litchi,

silk cotton, pine,

mango, and slow

growing ironwood.

The wilderness once

was in seedling bags.

I planted it.

8

Everything’s as it was:

house, road, tree,

the afternoon sun.

Except there’s no sign

of the folk that went by,

talking loudly.

9

The hiss

in the municipal tap,

the raised voices

in the trees.

Babblers, pigeons,

a tree pie,

each marking

its brief presence

on the branch

it occupies,

as another evening

falls in the hills

and the lights come on.

10

Only those are days

you won’t live to see.

The rest is night.

11

Get off your bum,

darling squirrel.

That’s the long tape

of my drying pajamas

you’re trying to reach.

12

On the stone terrace

swept by the rain,

a tribe of babblers

descends.

Identically clad,

they each know

where to peck

as they feast off

an empty plate,

quick beaks seeing

what no eye can.

13

Waist-high garbage pile,

freshly made;

girl walking past, painted

toenails, red;

parked motor scooter

covered with plastic sheet,

black.

What are the chances

of being hit by

a truck from behind?

Bright.

14

A drop of honey on the spoon

brings the bee spinning like a top,

distracting you from

the thought you were having—

about the bee spinning

like a top above the bowl

of honeyed porridge before you.

15

That dash

could’ve been

bird or fish

in sky or sea

or a thought

in the mind.

16

Taking the downpour

in their winged stride,

grey hornbills, beak

to tail, vanish behind

the wall as she emerges

unwrapped from the bath

like a bolt of lightning.

17

Twelve weeks of rain

not one day of sunshine,

not one glimpse of her,

or only one in someone’s

house, surrounded by people,

in another city.

The sky grey, sometimes black.

The season of drought.

18

Falling,

caught midway

in the lower ones,

there to remain green

till the tree is green,

the silk oak’s branch.

19

Not a mattress,

a mat will do;

there’s enough warmth

in the cold floor.