I discerned a face in the sand. It peered at me the way a child may peer at ants. I knew that face, had traced over the wrinkles marring the forehead, rubbed a finger on the mole below the eye, thought it was grime, realised it was not, and poked at the nose that was half an inch too long. It was a face of a woman, the eccentric lady who frequented my dreams, always walking with clicking heels, ivory robes dragging sludge, who dug pits with her purple fingernails. Are you look for this, I asked, handing over her face. She stood, corpse-like, and said, this lonely and bright thing, it beckons me, but this is not my face. This is yours.

The dragonfly
that perches on your finger,
on the wall, at the doorstep,
like still life human history,
on the page, close to the vines,
balancing atop that blue teacup,
fanning steam

as time slips, whistles, rips
like stitches twisted, which
unravelled, like a wish
you made last summer
when horses snickered, reined by
steel knights sweating and kissing
gloved hands, ladies laughing
over earl grey tea and shipped silk,
the dragonfly danced upon
melancholic waters

what is skulking in the moist darkness
must come forth and answer
how one equates infinite and none,
vain, like history, snow, and gold,
before sung poetry from the old —
to live one’s life for something, you say,
is to live one’s life alone for something

what is repeated,
wars and manipulation,
mutual destruction, human reproduction,
drilling and penetrating,
with rhythm and with force,
Is intrinsically obscene,
the mechanics ancient and ******,
beastly brutal and brutally simple –
the human wheel of time

dawn broke
over churning waters, a cycle of
chalky, foamed flowers grew and died,
quivering is the white fish washed ashore
twitching, pulsating, then stilled

the dragonfly, sensing death,
skitters away

can you see through the haze of
future parading shadows of commuters in the
                            crevice of time
past the kaleidoscopic glass castle and
                            sepia windows
reflected in your eyes
students baying within bubbles of blue
blaring muted, ancient, utopian cries
let's
       chase
                 clouds
                             from now

language —
transparent,
like dew, iris, cells,
when things were yet to be named, at the beginning
in the cradle of nothingness,
where darkness came first, before light,
before fire and earth,
Oceans, the favourite child, and the sky,
with her celestial, feathery friends, lazing on that hazy chasm;
from the horizon,
emerged forms and words
and poetry

II

Blue base and pink hues, black lining, framing the face saw once in dreams, a face with a name that began with the letter M. The other painting – a hazy black, red lips, no eyes – is a man’s face. Flying across shadowed, spiralling stairs, I encountered exits blocked by chairs – all these impressionist paintings hanging along the corridor, where a painter was explaining to his students the woman he met in his dream… they all called to me as a dream factory, dream logic – where everything was bound and unburdened, and we were told to identify faces in these coffin paintings. All day we tried matching, mouth stuttering half-formed names, lost faces, amputated body parts, strangers’ fragmented memory. Then the old lady I was working with let out a wail. She bolted, I followed, and there we saw creatures known as man and woman – to the woman on the right, she greeted with the M-lettered name, and to the man on the left she pointed at the eyeless painting, said, stranger, this is you– and they wept together.

I

I was told that faces persist, could wear away pebble, wind, and sand. Rivers, long and winding, and the rain, always so strange, mingle with rippling ashes of our ancestors, their fingers dipping through charcoal powder, tracing animals over stone’s face, carving bodies out of empty space, faded faces on walls. We are not a dream, they were saying. Not flashes of an aged old dream. Sand-like memory, look for us.