A Day in the Maryam of Winter

Across the road
snow has fallen
and filled
her body that
she kept on a rock

Maryam is an aluminum
box her grandmother
stores blouses in
of her foremother
from another land where
dust drowns itself
in the sea

A crow whistles
The scene shivers

Maryam leans
forward to take a glance
of her palms heavy
with someone else’s
dry leaves

She looks at the crow
The crow stares back
at her, they exchange eyes

Maryam can now
see herself from
the tree--her
body leaning
and collecting snow

She takes her eyes
back to throw them
at a black
dot receding
in the distance

Maryam then walks
to her house and
sits by the window
With leaves she paints
the trees brown
With snow she paints
the frame white

Taking Trips Inside a Room

A song walking in
Between my finger tips
Flew to his hair

I asked him
– Did you hear that?

He said – no, it was
Just your hand
Of ink marks
And dry mountain rocks

But then he
Sent a letter of
Striped pieces of heat
Walked over by
A confident spider
When the night spread
Inside the neighbour’s mouth

The letter wrapped up
In winter fog
Climbed the roof
Crawled on the floor
And reached my waist

Weather is Changing Clothes

There are moments
In the lifespan
Of an elephant's memory
When romantic rotations
Of the earth allow
Land and sky
To knot legs,
Legs stiff from
Elaborate sessions of
Knotting together
So perfectly that
It seems he is
passing through
A movie set.

My lady
Is made of
Copper and gold.
Her face is
A monastry for
Music to stretch
Arms in and touch
Its own face.
Her elbows scratch
Rocks, they hide
Behind their mothers.
Her waist climbs wind
Lets the earth
Untie its hair.

Street that Chases Its Tail

An empty glass of
water traps wind
brings a storm through
keyholes on the body
goes breathless and
rests on a tongue
till friends visit
in the evening
to watch veins dancing
on their arms
and yawn big Os
so that the magic is lost forever
while 3 A.M. crows
make fun of birds
who sleep next to them.

Morning is a disappointed friend
who never offers you a cigarette.

At the centre of this town
Is a building of windows
Everyone is a thief in
Their own house
They spread embroidered carpets of
Oil outside every escape
They step out to fall on head
And make each trip new

At the centre of my eye
Is your faraway face
You are a thief in
Your own house
Wherever I go I drink black gold
It spreads outside my eyes
You slip out in toe dance
To fall in the pit of my neck

अंधेरे में

सरला का समय जो चूला जलाने और चूला जलाने के लिए माचिस उठाने के बीच में धकेला हुआ था अप्रिय उल्टी व्याख्यान करते हुए स्व-मनोविश्लेषण का, जो खुद ही में था इतना गहरा और भारी कि उसने दूसरे कमरे की घड़ी को एक लंबा भाषण दे दिया, सरला के चूला जलाने के लिए माचिस उठाने से भी पहले।

भाषण का विषय था - क्या दुनिया दिमाग में हमेशा से भिनभिनाता हुआ मच्छर है या फिर वो साँप जो चुपचाप कोने से गुज़रकर कान में हल्की, खुजली वाली हिस्स छोड़ जाता है? घड़ी का मानना था कि दुनिया साँप है 'क्योंकि दुनिया चलती है, साँप चलता है, मैं भी चलती हूँ'। पर फिर घड़ी गलत साबित हुई क्योंकि कभी-कभी दुनिया को सारा समय बटोरकर आँखों के बीच नाक की हड्डी पर लेट जाना पसंद है। फिर वह एक ही बार में अपना भयंकर रूप दिखाकर आगे बढ़ने से मना कर देती। इसलिए, सरला के मनोविश्लेषण ने और कहा, कमरे में बंद रहने से ही चीज़ों की समझ नहीं आ जाती।

सरला इस बातचीत की ओर ध्यान ज़रा कम दे पायी। वो तो छत पर लेटकर अपनी छाती पे गिरती हुई सारी लाशों का वज़न तोलने में लगी थी। जिन्हें लंबी खुरदरी मालाएँ पहनाकर ज़मीन के थोड़ा ऊपर आसमान से लटकने को छोड़ दिया जाता है, वे सब हर रात सरला की ही छाती पर गिरकर पहाड़ बनाते हैं। फिर जब आज का पहाड़ पूरी तरह से जम गया और इसका तकरीबन वज़न भी लिख लिया गया, तब सिर्फ शरीर के बालों से गुज़रती हवा के आराम से ही सरला सो गई, अपने चूला जलाने के लिए माचिस उठाने के लिए उठने से भी पहले।

Passing through a Narrow Night

On a smooth metal rod

Two monks stitch

Each other's sleeves together

And sway their robes

Hanging tall along with curtains

So they can watch how

Every needle pulls all jasmine

Nectar out from gardens of flesh

Resting on each bed

Megaphone: Night is narrow, ladies

Please squeeze yourself out

Square 1

A six-month-old cries

Herself to sleep

A needle sucks jasmines from

This tiny garden

For combat her mother passes

A very silent weapon of smiles

Into her dreams

Square 2

A needle gets ready to

Start tonight's sucking

Lady: Ah Ammi, it pains!

She rolls her eyeballs

Man (whispering): Your Ammi cannot hear you

Lady: I will beat you

With my chappal. I will kill you,

You dog

They both chuckle

Square 3

A lady feeds her newborn

From her breast,

From her arm

She feeds a needle

Square 4

Yesterday she saluted the air

For being there always

And killed herself

Tonight she pulls air,

Lets a needle pull out her sap

Square 5

The needle here is now stout

And rigorous. A squirrel hops

Over this yellow garden

Settles on her stomach

Shakes her arms

Wakes her up and asks:

Are you sleeping?

Letter to a Dead Poet

Dear Pessoa,

I think you are fine with my settlement on this name. After receiving the right mosquito bite on my left leg I decided to write you this letter. I felt it as a sign to let you know that your poetry has never come across new to me, not even the very first poem I read. It was there always, as far as I can think of the days I started knitting an endless muffler of some twisted memory of myself. It was there when a raindrop on forehead felt like a giant watermelon; when occurrences passing by became so still that I could feel the earth revolving. It is still there when little kids start knowing that all events are just lonely leaves getting blown from one place to another in any pattern.

Anyway, nothing is new. So may be it is alright to live countless myths. It is alright to let a hundred streetlamps pour red wine at night on women and men who suck tender mahua from each others breasts. To crush almonds of eyes into an early morning paste as offering to gods who hang from beards of the priests. Gods who just want to wipe off their sweat.

If days and nights don't work then one can let talkative inner sparrows deliver lectures on silence to clocks. Or one can lean on a wall and create music in smoke. Once in the neighbourhood there was a gang of cows who sat in a corner of land only to watch the shape their pond took when tiny clones of the sun fell on it. Then we ate them or peeled off our eyelids or they went to a new pond. I don't remember exactly what happened but we did eat up each other.

May be it is fine to make and bury corpses breathing in a subtle rhythm. May be not. Either way I wanted to ask you if you could deposit some money in my account. My pockets have eloped from my pant again.

Take care.

Love.

बस एक और सवाल

क्या तुम्हारे पास
कोइ कागज़ है
जिसपर मैं ऐसा चाँद बना सकूं
जो डूबते हुए सूरज से चिपककर
ज़मीन को
उल्टा करके देखने पर
उगते हुए सूरज की भान्ति लगे
और जिसे मैं मोड़कर
तुम्हारी ही जेब में रख दू
और फिर रात को तुम
उसकी सिलवटों पर इस्तरी कर के
उसे अपने बरामदे में रख सको
ताकि तुम्हारे कपड़े सूख जाए?

Counting Time through Speedposts Never Sent but Whispered to the Tubelight

Do I contain 
in a litre of your thought
when you take the stairs
and jolt down
to reach the lane?

Glass burning in the furnace
holes in bras and underwears 
which fly or dry in the wind
could they tune me?

Could the child sleep-talking downstairs
push me to vacuum under the bed
to cooked kitchens
and secret burrows?

And could owls and bats arguing
about who is more sleepless,
alive bodies already living
posthumously
deflect me
and fill me into you
just like the way you sense your dry skin
or the folds of your sleeves?