I was born to wayfarers,
my mother is the Sky.
The meadows all homes
and dewdrops kin.

The Night would pitch
a tent and retreat into
the fields at dawn;

And oh her beauty
decked in a tunic
of fading stars and
the dying moon.

I sat by her feet and asked,
tell me about the greatest
mystery of all:

...and she vanished,
her words echoing in
the corners and in
the wet winds that
lashed the valley...

Rock-still by the eroding river,
reed-still in the dance of the tide,
who eyes this world in mercy?
Shameful deeds now holy for
warriors of God. Outcast of ages
from steads by night, trek through
land where shadows upturned,
curses fain down from skies
in return for the homages in fire.
Emotion of the void that sighted
the exploding stars of hoary ages,
rock-still, reed-eyed friend of man
is there such a one indeed as this?

It's one of those things, it is that kind of night:
the winds have stopped wheezing before dawn
and the birds don't want to wake up yet.
A fire is lighting up on the eastern sky
that was burning in the heart through the hours.
I see a bangled wrist half-concealed
in the mists: shadows of events mingle
past the grilles of thoughtlost timelines.
I will wade across the river at the nearest ford
and meet you at the temple: friend,
will you wait? Oh this intolerable whir of the
dewsong, it is interrupting your answer.

I belong
             to no God
             no nation
             no creed
             no section

but to Spirit that
is home as much in man
as in the dumb and the meek

say brother, I have
                                no religion

but that of love that animates
the fabric of all existence.

and no deed as holy
as to love fellow folk
as I do myself, however
unlike me they be,
though pure of the heart.

Back in the days when
my friend Grisham John
started as a teenage artist,  he was poor
and had but onions and yogurt for meals;
and once he stole some paint
from the local corner shop

"Aha, caught you red-handed,"
said the cliche-infested store-owner
"Give me a reason
why I should not call the police"

"Well," said John Grisham
****-sure of his talent
"I can immortalize you as 'Scrooge in Red'
or 'Generosity in Psychedelic'
You choose..."

----------------------------------------------------­-----
so when Grisham John comes to
your town,  look out for,
amongst his exhibits:
*"Generosity in Psychedelic
with inset of Scrooge in Red"

Forlorn sheets fluttering in the winds
splattered in smoke and ruination,
empty the streets where she'd played lost:

Haunting her now among
shadows in the cell she's chained
to slavery
of the religious kind.

Beast more than beast these men that
stare in hubris awaiting their turn
to partake of infidel flesh.

Behold! The holy empire of God is here.

That morning she'd grown up -
blood between her thighs had
stopped her play,
and her chastity was proclaimed.
Selima must learn to respect men
and the ways of God and His
rules of modesty.

Now, as he grunts and groans
in holy pleasure as he mounts
her by turns, ******* at the altar
to be an example of how ******
the lot of the pagan and faithless be.

Mother, is this the modesty that
God commands of infidel women?

How merciful indeed is He that
He creates in faithful men a beastly craving
and provides too for them
uncircumcised ***** in pillage.

A raga of another time, from another day,
plays in the head:
grime of the day, stuck on my hands.

You shot an arrow across the eastern skies.
Senora, a hundred cries you carry
in your womb, yet I never
found you in the peasant woman
in whose arms I fell asleep, when
at noon you disappear at the horizon.

Maiden of the moons, at dusk I lost you
to the trail of lotuses blooming westward.

It is raining in gusts but this storm
cannot wash it away:
Guilt, like turmeric, stains the soul.