While I was waiting eagerly for him
saying to myself,
‘If I see you anywhere
I’ll gather you
and eat you up,’
he beat me to it
and devoured me entire…
NAMMALVAR
(translated by A.K. Ramanujan)
When the hunter’s arrow pierces
the union
of birds
it is the beginning
of the story –
an anguish of feathers
the memory of nests
a prosody of loss.
We wore another grammar.
It flashed like chain mail
in the sun.
Even the gods eavesdropped on our whispers.
Between us
we had seventeen words
to describe the moon.
A story must have bone,
a long dreaming Euphrates
of a tail,
twitching, incised
by a shiver of illogic.
Moon enough
to allow one lone frog
to drip endless reverie
on a winter night.
Nerve. Plenty
of nerve.
Some awaken.
Some sedate.
I need both
in different
(homeopathic)
doses.
Be my story.
Some stories have holes.
Some don’t join the dots.
Sometimes the only way from middle to end
is the leap.
Some are long, frayed,
open-mawed,
sticky with promise,
lotus-petalled,
frog-tongued,
sanctuary for flies drunk
on green noonflight.
Some stories devour other stories.
I recognise you.
I’d like a pond
fermented by vineyards of sun
where dragonflies gaze
at mountains ribboned
by minnow and drunken cloud
where the light is ice crystals
and sweet lime.
Let’s pause here
and forget
that this hushed poise of leaf
conceals another legend –
incendiary like our own.
For a while, love,
let’s pretend
there’s something like a still pond.
I’d build a story complete
with suspect and alibi
from my handbag’s deepest compartment
for you
squeezing every drop of memory
out of the shell from the Lake of Galilee,
a Portuguese banker’s visiting card,
a safety pin,
bindis from Matunga Market,
if it could get me closer.
I’d suck you to the marrow
like a drumstick
and throw away the sapless corpse
if it could get me closer
I’ll fax, photocopy,
read us in translation forever, if I must.
But as the world around us shrieks
and rages and babbles in tongues,
promise me,
promise me there’s an original.
Much as I dislike
locks, bolts, keys, security checks
I do like frames.
And to hear our murmurs
I see the need for enclosure.
Let them stay,
the beams, lintels, columns.
And I’m not immune
to the charms sometimes
of a good old-fashioned doorway
where you stoop a little to enter
from dazzling light
to dark invitation.
What the hell,
add a password, if you must.
Outside the night winds howl,
democratically intimate.
Let’s defer that story.