War time

When your country is at war, soothsayers gather
to hoard the spoils of hunting days;

buzzing loud over the trenches deep,

around mother's hearts and a yellow press-

Their hands red,caked with blood

of honest sacrifice, as they prowl
about the piles of bone restless,

to build an empire, with intimidating howl,

Until the bonnet bursts with pestilent curse
and the earth dries up like good old Mars.

Nemesis

I dream of escape from the blood thread snare
of your pouncing gaze,
Leopard lust, hung amber torches,
all along the staircase of sleepless wandering-
I move in the whorls of maze your eyelashes form,
Black, grimy and dipped with the poison of thirst,
I am the object the Future hunts.

Yeatsian Quintain

A tumble in the hay is all sweet in May,

Roses die where blooms the heather;

A tumble in the hay is all sweet in May,

And Swans croon ere they disappear,

The rushes lie at the bottom of time's meander .

Encounter

Rain pattered on my window a certain dusk,

I leaned above the pane to gather its husk;

round and smooth like bullets shot clean,

piercing the harvester’s skin,

or bold trellis of lover’s nails in the dark.

Rain hurled himself upon my window pane,

stirring up dust and memories galore,

and a whiff of old romance,

You’d find in Marquez’s Melancholy Whore;

the prey knelt over the threshold of care,

a young, demure Rapunzel,

who let her hair for the Prince’s stair,

taking the crone for her intended.

Remembrance

Do you remember how you took me to an empty tunnel?

We didn't kiss but held hands demurely, like children.

But I remember how you pulled me close scaring me with

stories of ghosts that haunted empty places, innocently.

It did not take much time to run down alleys and

hikes in the hot days of June or the rainy July after that.

My hair flying in your face as we rattled on the old bike

carefree, to pretended natural parks on the wayside.

That tempest tossed Poplar still stands by the green pool

as we first saw it, studying its ruddy face in a swoon.

And the Gulmohur blesses the old and the young akin

with her petals that strew the steps to the river this evening.

And the potter is building new images at this time,

Jesus, Mary, Kali all under one roof, I marvel at their permanence,

as we left our adolescent tears and impressions not on stone

but pages of diaries and ever changing breast of the waves.

I have come past you but not your remembrance

as the shadow of the sun glides over the railway plate

in each slow dusk or sudden rain.

From the home window

The rain starts pouring at night,
hurling and tumbling the swinging trees,
the leaves choke in delirious wine and
dance with the raucous breeze.

From the musty window sill,
all mist no snow can I see,
Only the old Hibiscus tree, scattering
a pendulous host of red fairies.

The headiness of rain swept, wavy grass
Sink in my mind as I breathe,
drawing mouthfuls of peace hard found,
in our narrow cells of grease.

Wife

When the sun dips low in the faraway pine woods,
my husband comes home with inevitable muddy boots;
the axe, shines silver steel, put proudly across his shoulder,
a stack of firewood rolled in his brawny arm, a sprig of occasional heather.
Unloading the bundles, he gobbles the porridge I made,
with amazing swiftness of a bird of prey,
while I cower by the oven, dreadfully aware of the night,
when he will turn to me in bed and lift his weapon to strike.