Lingering in clusters around the idle seas
leaning inward dotted by
dried, them channels of hyacinth rivers
come like an old city emerging
out of the clouds like hundreds
of coloured cardboard boxes
packed away parted by unruly lanes
and withered lakebeds
and winding roads laden with lamps
the hunger for the sky has skived
away granite, now lakes
them empty quarries that grin
like the old grandmother
toothless, whitening hair thinned out
those forests now reservationed
rises a spire, aspiring for heaven
from this mud rolled windwashed earth

So you hurl that at me:
the expletive called Truth;
But you were silent
when they peddled their
narratives
Yes it must be like this -
Truth must have
leafy shades of the Left.
When they ******
it's rebellion and rightful;
When they dissent
it is but lawful;
If they break my bones,
break my temple to house,
their dogmas,
burn me down in sleep,
I deserved it: pagan
and worthless that I am,
whose belief must deserve
denigration.
But you were silent
and did not hurl
this expletive called Truth -
The meek the broken the oppressed,
when they resist
It's then that they hurl
This expletive called Truth

fragrant the thicket –

this morning hour of blue mists,

hope blooms in the bush

Before her there was substance
but no existence;
Hers the fire that animates,
bliss at the root of being.
She measured out the three spaces
that enmesh our worlds,
order from chaos;
Soothing hand that
touches our heart and heals
the our soul aching
through the throb of fate;
In the ochre hours when
a thousand songbirds hymn
she lies curled a creeper flower
breathing fragrance
in a gust of silken wind;
Mortal heart that kens not
the song of the dawns

of long revealed in the dunes
ancient in the tongues
guidance
for our lives

read them in full
live them lines
as they our fathers did

rend them
meanings accrued
port not a port, nor a portal
nor a road a road
vessel a vessel

compendiums
codices, them
cross-references
exegesis

veiled must the woman be

between the simile and metaphor
spiritual and literal
lost in the dunes of these lines
the meaning

these are our leaders: ash-born, clay-footed,
emerging in the fudge grays of beyond light,
shadows of the incense plumes
we light in prayer

long washed ashore here from yonder worlds
of darkness and mystery

by a wand wave thieve-made,
exiled our kings to the far realms, alien
then this self-lost band
of otherworldly priests, effeminate
our smiths and weavers, liars
our bards that sung of heroes
and conniving crooks our tradesmen

no we are not to prosper in common
with our kinsmen across the hills
but in the name of God, amen,
say peace to the holy ghosts,
rises deified a language and a nation

so we break the idols of the past
and garland our heroes of reason
clay-footed they come,
and die drowning without an heir

alpha and omega
of our rootless world,

on this road to the world beyond the  horizons
the years, they unravel, casketed
events rolled like leaves on the trees
flanking the sides:
some, tall, a family of beautiful memories:
put down, now logged and lumbered -
there's a wound that cannot be healed
it's called heartbreak - cyclone that
breaks on our land, ravaging everything
some bent down, broken pride
and leaves, leaves, caskets within caskets:
there, yonder beyond the electric cables,
a moustached village deity astride a horse,
wielding a fearsome machete, under the wide sky:
where we stopped those many years ago
wonder eyed, to capture on our lens,
now passing by nonchalant -
shack where drivers always stopped for tea,
the stream-bend where cows crossed, the restaurant
that we no longer visit- now behind the new lane
the boulevard of green gulmohars blooming late
all rolling back like waves into the sea
it is a year ringing in:
it is years that have been rung out
like pieces in the glass cup-boards,
shell-dolls, them old books, deities put to slumber
of last worshipped, and books, them books, prayer books
mystery books, all untouched for a long long time
it's a quest that's over, past its prime
there rages that debate whether it points
only forward, never backward, but I say
my friends, there is no arrow of time:
only memories - every event, a flower,
plucked from the garden of life,
ever arranged in bouquets or coffins
in the heirloom collections of our reflections