The whole avenue unfurls before my eyes.
Buildings change shape.
Billboards, the letters of the alphabet.
Neon lights scream bedlam.
Men and women scurry hither and thither.
Faces change expression
in a swirling flux.
I looked at the scene through a wide angle lens
over a wide span of time.
Then zoomed into the particular.

I hear the tolling of the bell,
the beating of the falcon’s wings...
I tremble expectant—
the steel claws
lifting me soaring into the clouds weightless swinging
electrified…

Sometimes I am as eloquent
as a tomb in a merry park.
Revelers fall silent in my presence.
And when they walk away,
their footsteps on the gravel path,
dumb with forebodings!

At other times I am a wild lily
that had escaped the gardener’s notice,
waltzing with the roses and dahlias,
to the pitch and fall of the breeze.

It disconcerts...
to be thus
conspicuous.

My gills flap shut and open,
lips pouting,
blowing bubbles, swirling
to the surface, going
plop, plop…

I twirl my tail, stalling,
fins on thin ether groping,
unsure where, what, when, why, how—
glass-eyed,
trying to remember—
who?

Baffled I am all of a sudden—
Why I am I and not you?
Have you ever wondered, dear,
why you are you and not me?

I feel your fingers twined around mine,
your pulse throbbing on mine;
but I can’t say which is which—
beats diffuse as mist into mist.

You open the window and look outside—
I see through your eyes a solitary crow
high on the swaying sparkle of a tree,
preening its feathers warm in the sun. 
Its feathers all damp from last night’s rain,
it shakes its fluff in shuddering bouts—
oh how it itches, itches, beneath the wings!
How nice the sharp beak combing, scratching!

Baffled I am all of a sudden—
why I am I and not the crow?
Have you ever wondered, dear,
why you are you and not the crow?

This moment I share with the child just born somewhere
taking its first breath wailing
and my friend here in the hospital bed
gasping out his last breath.
His children chant the glory of Ram.
The room resonates.
Beyond the window the sky resonates.
An eagle circles unhurried
among the rainclouds.
A duster over an old blackboard
erases all jottings.

The first rains of another monsoon
come pouring down.
Together we set paper boats sailing,
over a pool in our backyard,
away somewhere.

Thus at this mysterious meeting place
we realize we have misplaced
the art of remembering each other.

We simply sit facing each other,
a smile glowing between us,
speaking nothing.

I have forgotten the entire way I had flowed
reaching your side,
like a river,
never remembering the meandering way from where.

Your eyes are new to me—
long dark lashes wet and beautiful!
You have my reflection there in a sprouting teardrop.
A distilled drop in a deep blue lagoon...

Shall I, dearest, kiss it softly away?
Though I know not your name...

On my windowsill,
flapping, a dove perches still...
Ooo too close I freeze!
Feathers glistening
metallic, yet soft-crooning—
our eyes meet spellbound!

And then these convalescent, brooding,
days come tumbling one over the other
in silent succession,
talking to me in familiar gestures—
now the municipal garbage gatherer
emptying the bin of yesterday’s waste,
then the unsmiling milk vending dame
carrying light her kettle and measure,
the newspaper boy flinging the day's fare
with the same precision over the gate,
the twin-jingle of his bicycle bell
vanishing round the corner of the street...

I keep reciting the lines again and again
as though learning by heart
the jingle of an old nursery rhyme…
Ding, ****, bell,
*****’s in the well!
Ding, ****, bell…

You will never tell me,
will you,
what blessings you sought,
what silent wishes,
hands folded in prayers yesterday
in the sacred grove of our illusions.

You merely smiled.
The peacock spread its plumes
and danced for me.
A whole constellation of stars,
shifting...

And nothing happened, dearest,
the whole of this evening too—
there was no sunset,
the rainclouds,
heavy in the skies...

You didn't come; it didn't rain.
Only the sea...restless.

For days it was as if I never existed.
You have flung me out of your world
like a wilted flower from your vase.

I have treasured our unuttered pledges—
rising with your name as a prayer on my lips,
breathing the morning breeze,
marveling,
oh God, isn’t this the same fragrance my dear one breathes!

I waited beneath your window last night,
heart aflutter under the moon,
for a rustle at the curtain,
a fleeting glimpse of your shadow...

Throughout you kept it shut.

It rained the whole of last night, dearest.
The banyan tree beyond my window
swished and swayed in the storm.

How bleak the wet luminance of my wait!
No streetlamp blinked
on the riddle of your returning trail
over the desolate stretches of the night.

My eyes stood sentinel,
the whole night, dearest,
for the faraway flicker of your torch
hurrying home...
Only fireflies wheeled lost and hopeless in the gale.

And there was lightning too, dearest—
white stallions carting the chariot of faceless shadows
down the valley of my gloom. 
My-heart-leapt-at-each-thunderclap...
Did I hear,
muffled in its rumble,
your fumble at the gate,
knock at the door?

1.
Then comes the day when
I on a clay-tiled floor lie spread-eagled,
a box of chess pieces toppled over the checkerboard,
wracked by phenomenal indecisions--
should it be the rook, the bishop, the pawn?
Oh from all directions checkmated!

2.
And at sunset,
when the birds on tired wings fly to roost
and the whole earth is suffused in a golden glow,
a door opens
at the far end of a dark corridor.
Light skids down the floor,
like skaters sliding down a silent *****.
Words vanish to open a void...
The strains of a poem
trip lightly in!

3.
Was it long ago, or just  yesterday?—
In a flickering moment of revelation,
when the distant lighthouse swung its beam
past my windless sail,
did I quiver?
Like this, did I quiver?
Was it the chill on the open seas?
Or, was it
your soft tread on my cabin floor?
Do I remember? Don’t I remember?...

4.
At your touch
I turn a bubble,
a bubble,
balanced on the tip of a thorn,
On this windless evening!