In the Himalayan mountains,
bordered by the Chindwin River,
bordered by the humid jungle,
      sweaty, musky, monsoon scented,
East of hot and sultry plainlands
      climbs a cooler verdant forest
      to a green and vibrant woodland,
filled with mossy bamboo thickets,
filled with silent trees that listen
to      the Naga log drum beating;
          shrill cicadas’ night-time trilling;
          waking hornbills, evü, goking;
          and the flashing fireflys mating
              like a white-hot viper chilli
              spreads it’s burning incandescence.
There, amongst the hilltribe people
      is my centre, is my focus,
      separated by a journey,
      many days by air and roadway,
but my most important person
      from that place so far, so distant,
lives and loves with me forever,
      in my home, my hearth, my heartland.

A naked branch awaits the spring
    when vernal vigour will awake
      the cuckoos calling on the wing.
A naked branch awaits the spring
    like distant soundless whispering
      around the icy listening lake.
A naked branch awaits the spring,
  when vernal vigour will awake.

Caught in our wild sweaty wickedness,
he hastily withdrew,
left me like meat:
dragged, debased,
exposed and butchered
on ***** ochre soil.
Old men’s lewd burning eyes
******* transgression
spiced with rectitude.
Young men sniff my adultery
and swell like figs
succulent with stricture.
Women boil the oil of resentment
and anoint my skin
with blistering imagination.

Ringed by scorn,
I kneel before a judge
who bends down and
draws in the dirt.

Guilt lusts for sacrifice, but
no one is worthy
to light the refining pyre,
except the one who draws
in the drab yellow dust.
Impotent and muttering
my accusers sulk into the sand.

His cool clear gaze
looks at my filthy bitterness
without grimace.
His living words
whittle my trespasses away
sculpting a cleansing change.