I was walking in the desert.
The shadow was long
when the dunes went silent
and I sank to my knees
staring at the skies.

Past an abandoned drum
wailing in the winds,
where a half-buried mask
peeps out of the sand.

When the rain came
it poured out in torrents
and I had no place
to hide my soul.

Forefingers to thumbs,
I strain my eye to look through
the rummage of life.

Or on the tree
in the river island?

But it is like the song
that you know you remember
but can't put words to:
looping in and out,

Where did I leave my heart?

It's hard to tell,
when the love dried up
like the river in the desert.

Long in the night, when darkness is deepest
I find you, faint in the clearing among the trees
playing with the silver hues of new-moon light.
When fog fills the air moist with rains, you
hurry into the pond on a trail of stalks bringing
lotuses to bloom and spreading in ripples.
Every lonely morning, you pour crimson ink
to awaken the drooping leaves and sing in the
tiny voices of a hundred swallows welcoming
the slow winds of dawn: you, Senora, fill all
transitions; Early nights, I see, your smiles light
the room in the faint shadows of the dim lamps

I want to see some old photographs:
older than those on the computer;
Back when moments were precious,
unveil the shrouded busts,
and see the face of my friend
as he was then;

The best of us disappear
into the fields at dusk,
leaving behind memories for us
of colours and of songs.

Tonight, I will
walk by the bund, and onward
to the land beyond the horizon
where they sparkle at night as stars
our friends here, who have
gone to the far beyond.

I am peace. I wave over
every dawn by your shores.
I sing with the grilles and die
unsung like the evening.

I exist. Sometimes
only as a photograph, frozen
in my smile. Sometimes,
smoking my pipe of joy
fiddling by your side; Some
times, I am a memory
enshrined in your heart.

The stillness of the noon;
Of the sky, of the sea,
late after the stars retire,
amidst unceasing waves.
It's about stillness.
Being still. It's about that.
Silence. No that is
not stillness.
Silence is still-born.
It's about those days when
you wake up when you wish
you don't have to.
and nights when you sleep
when you don't want to.
Dreams come undone,
castles on water.
It is the days when
the still small voice
is silent; goes dead, signless.
It's about those days.
When stillness matters.

The leaves in winter, they all fall in place.
In endings hidden, embers of a new life.
Every once in a while an unknown girl
walks up close on a smoggy night;
And an awkward lank woos her with
half-withered roses by the south bank;
Going after severed kites,
landing now by the memory lane:
by the Thames, holding a palmful,
saying, this river's named after you:
she has a dimpled smile;
By the lakes, deep at night, when the moon
walks over the waves, dancing with the swans;
Where the Lee bends around the corner,
a red bus emerges out of the mist,
a hero on chilly nights of the early autumn,
when the dhak welcomes the Goddess home.
Teals, wobbling out of the pond, by
the temple of love, closed for ages now;
Crimson paint dripping from the evening
sky at the corners;
Every day when loving this way
seems like a picture painting away,
get lost walking by the Thames;
Whirling back like the descent from the Eye,
time and crackers light the sky,
on a Guy Fawkes night.

The urchin banging at the car
on rainy nights,
begging for a buy;

The old house down the road
making way for another
highrise where no one will live;

The cobbler at the corner store
smiling away toothless
awaiting  his death;

The mausoleum of the hero
of the past - rebellion glorified
is the new tradition;

The aquarium where
water dried up
and the fish, all died;

I am the city that you
don't  see dying,
obsessed with 'progress'.

It was a story I was writing -
very interesting, but,
it never ends:

Just when the clouds gathered
at the edge of the season,
a conflagration from the beginning
consumed all the hope;

looping backwards just
when I thought, I'd reached ******;

Like the story about the oasis
where all the chapters are about
mirages,

this is a story about love,
but all the chapters are about
how not to love.

I see a butterfly in my cup
that I never noticed before:
and it flew out and flew away.

In the winds that
blew the pages away.