Book Five

Farewell, Inside An Urn. Written: 2009/4/23.

Beats / Syllables: Irregular.

Today, I bury more than mere ashes,

White and powdery remainders of a life that

Spanned decades and embraced the earth.

I bury the earth itself,

A few remaining hairs, and memories.

For now it is time to leave this earth,

With all its associations,

Stage of misappropriated life,

Innocent of all,

But the means through which the

Years of futility were played out.

In toiling over you, I toiled

For others.

Autumn leaves scattered and

Congregated over you,

Driven by a wind that seemed muted

From within the bedroom.

In winter I loved you,

For you were frozen, untouchable, and

Therefore unworkable.

During short spring, when bog black turtles

Dragged themselves from one pond to the next,

The grass stirred from its seasonal grave, and

Prepared to seize life once more.

Yet in summer I hated you,

For through you, I toiled for others.

I never dug, cut sifted, weeded or

Hoed you, save at someone else’s bidding.

You and I were,

At the end of decades, strangers.

So now I bury you too, earth of garden,

Of lawn, of Essex!

I would fain bury the memories, but they are

Smoke like, and will not be

Kept underground.

Like riotous strands of tinsel, they

Refuse to leave the tree, the carpet, the

Un swept corners of a room.

They cling to the edge of things visible, like the

Yellow powder of pine pollen

Around the edge of a pond.

The winds will not blow you away, no,

Not ever, while I live on this earth.

So now, I leave you too,

Memories of the past, and

All the visible things associated with you!

Keep your pond;

Your old garden, resting under sod;

Your new and beautiful gardens,

Framed in exquisite walled terraces;

Your groves of silent pine trees,

Crying down their pollen, their needles,

Their cones, their branches.

I bear you no malice for what you are,

By nature, but as symbols of

Another reality, which, together with me,

Robbed me of much.

Under the willow tree,

Planted by waters, by him

Who we bury today, do we stand.

The day is still, and the

Tendrils of will hang motionless.

The moment requires no word: the only

Word that needs be spoken is written

On the earth, by earth itself.

All sound is swept away by the wind;

All pollen is taken by the waters.

If they say, “He who troubles his family

Shall inherit only wind”, I respond, “Then

Where is my inheritance, that I may have it?”

Alone, by the water’s edge,

Standing on the slightly damp soil,

I turn away from the lighted windows and the

Ripples of cocktail mirth somewhere

Behind, and I look up at the last

Patches of light from the passing evening.

The wind is here, and it takes me

To a far away place, where there is another

Earth and another life: my own.

Into the garden, into the pond,

I shake another urn,

Of earth, not ashes.

I leave the urn upon a terrace wall, and

Walk into the waiting night.

******************************************************

“Where Are You Going, Oh Maid From Pyay?” Written: 2010/2/1.

Beats / Syllables: Irregular.

Notes: Pyay is a mid-sized town, on the lower third of the Irrawaddy River, in Burma.

“Thanaka” is a local type of sun-screen, worn on the face by many people in Burma.

Where are you going, oh maid from Pyay?

To the market-place, fresh with the news of the land,

With peppers and spices and pumpkins, too.

And I go with a babe in my belly to bear,

The one who will hold me in life’s twilight years.

My cheeks are arrayed in “thanaka” fair,

To ward off the suns in the water and sky.

And I’ve a sister, and brother, and cousin here, too.

We set out together, and cram on a bed,

On a ferry that’s bursting with likeminded folk.

And you? Why do you travel along with us,

On a once-weekly boat on the margins of earth?

I answer her not, but stare at the sky,

At clouds faintly scattered and burnished with blue,

At the river’s inscruitable current of silt,

And past them all, to the place I would go,

Beyond dreams, and visions, and beckoning hope,

Where lavender’s scent is faint in the mind,

And the laughter of children fainter still.

What do you long for, oh maid from Pyay?

For my family and friends, and the ripening fields,

As brown turns to green, and sickle-time gold.

I long for the geese that conquer the mounts,

Who share my world here, with one far away.

And I long for the sun on the river at dawn,

For the harsh silver lamp of the moon in the night,

To a time when I need not my “thanaka” cream,

And my children beside me, wherever I stand.

And you? What do you long for, as day turns to fire,

When afternoon’s heat drives us into our thoughts?

I answer her not, but my mind’s with the wind,

Caressing the palm-fronds, caressing the mounts,

Past the steam as it rises from the tea in her hand,

And past it all, to the one I would know,

Beyond travels, and pleasures, and the things of this world,

Where lavender’s scent remains in my mind,

And with it, the laughter of children.

*************************************************

“In Uncertainty’s Wilderness.” Written : 2010/4/4 to 2010/4/5. For A.G.

Beats / Syllables : Irregular.

Sometimes, life stretches ahead of me,

Far away, into the obscure distance.

I walk, alone, in the plain of uncertainty,

With an unseen sun high overhead.

Shadows departed long ago, the long

Messengers of the morning shrunk,

Reduced to brief moments of darkness

Under the soles of my feet.

Lizards of remorse – or else doubts

Posing as remorse – run away from me,

To dart under the nearest stones,

Before I can identify them.

The voices of lies, uninvited and

Roving frequently inside my mind,

Whisper throughout the hour-less day,

Then into night’s formlessness.

Surely this happened somewhere before,

In another desert, somewhere outside

Among the stones, between sky and sand,

After the river, and before the crowds.

However, the similarity goes no further;

In fact, I feel something of an impostor.

The desert, the solitary wandering, the

Trek through uncertainty are all there,

Yet what brought me to those places is

Anything but the same. The views match,

As a reflection, but not the foot-steps,

Littering a lifetime of remote walkways.

Did I even see the river, or get wet?

With what eyes do I scan the crowds?

Here, however, there are no people,

Human voices speaking affirmation or

Rebuttal : all sounds have been withheld.

Even the stones have kept silent,

Refusing the sustenance of words;

They dare not offer me one whisper.

The poplar trees of long ago stand,

In remote, scattered groups of four or

Five, twisted almost beyond recognition.

Their gnarled and dry branches reach up,

Into the sky, as if to clasp it, and

If possible, to never let go of a vision.

Nothing here moves, in all of time or space.

The ripples on the bottoms of long dried-out

Mudflat patches remain, hard-mud reminders

Of something else, distantly conceived.

Now, the flats, the ripples, the edges,

Every surface of the writhing bark

Are tinged with softly dirty-grey soda,

With potash crystals from the dead earth.

Was it for this silent solitude – everything

Being withheld – that I trusted in myself?

I leave the last of the poplars behind;

Even the barest of shadows is denied me.

Now, only the sun reveals the way onward,

As I walk mechanically over a featureless

Landscape, utterly devoid of significance,

Direction, or promise of better or worse.

I almost cannot perceive the wayward steps,

Little by little, by which I came here.

If the stars ever come out, I choose to

Believe they will lead me to the mountains,

Where there is water, and a way forward.

********************************************

“Do Not Tell Me.’ Written: 2010/4/28. For A.G.

Beats / Syllables: Irregular.

Do not tell me that love cannot grow

Out of the wasteland, like

Weeds among the shattered bricks,

For I have seen it, delicate and swaying,

Fragrant memories of another world,

Mingled with the harshness of smoke.

Love could not be what it is,

Unless it were set out, fragile-petaled,

Among hard rocks, out of thin soil.

I go to the wasteland – of boxed-in lives,

Of sprawling recklessness, of

Wandering children in the slow foam of

Another day in the covered market --

For there, I will find you, growing and

Blossoming, irrespective of citcumstance.

Out of the confusion of night’s dreams,

Called once again to the vision,

Love’s unquenchable summons, I leave

Warm, futile comfort and pass-times,

To cross into your world, shunned

By so many, and there find you.

There, you prepare a resting place for me,

A cleft in the rocks, from which I see

Lives swirling and floating past.

Eyes of the curious are ever present,

Seeking and moving away, but I heed

Them not : my heart and my eyes return,

Always return to you.

There you sit, holding court amidst those

Life strews and re-strews, the

Ever-forming rubble of a flexing society.

To wander among the wasteland of rubble,

Over the remnants of condemned buildings and

Shattered masonry, to sit on the ground,

Hard, sharp and grit-dusty --

This is my wish. Here, I shall find you.

Out of these stones you will grow,

Casting fragrance unseen into the air,

Casting fragrance in full view, yet unseen,

To those who pass by uncaring.

Let me see you, as the wind passes over you,

While there is yet time!

**********************************************

“The Building Where Once We Made Love Is Gone.” Written : 2010/5/21 to 2010/5/25.

Beats / Syllables : Irregular.

The building where we once made love is gone,

Removed, as if in a dream, by the morning winds.

My home for five years, filled with every

Imagination and the fruits of writing, and

Yours, for about five exploratory nights,

Has been torn down and carted away.

Even the epithet, “A mound of rubble,

Overgrown with thorns,” is denied to it.

When I return to this home a third time,

After exile and detainment in my homeland,

I was glad to return to its decrepid familiarity,

To the oft-neglected stair-wells, veneered

In corrosive dust-ash, blown in by winds,

From every corner of the troubled city.

Dust was nature’s graffiti, spoken out

Against the people’s ceaseless encroachments.

It lay on every stair-tread, huddled

For weeks on end in cracks and in corners,

Was rubbed into the paint unlovingly,

Jumped off the window-ledges, came in

Through the rust-frozen, never-closed windows,

Or made soft grinding sounds underfoot.

I came back to the old building, to the

Familiar feelings and sounds of passing life,

But not to the same rooms, where we were.

Occasionally, I went past the old door,

Then stopped, alone, silent, and remembering,

To think of you, and me, and of us then,

And how now, we are growing older,

In new walks of life in this city.

Alone in a stair-well once my own --

But now the roosting-path of strangers,

Who could come up or down at any moment,

To question my lingering, the reason

For being there, even my very existence --

Standing stock-still, I think back to the

Earlier times, when you came to me.

The days were long and arduous,

Overburdened with counterfeit love,

Genuine worries, and much in between.

I came home to the apartment, shuffling

Under a load of books and bags,

Moving slowly in a dust-glazed and

Frozen landscape. The only other motion,

Sigh of life came from dried-up leaves,

Off-white plastic bags, or insignificant

Flecks of trash, toyed by wind-eddies.

Somehow, the dust made it inside,

Into the stair-well, and even into my rooms.

The further inside I went, the finer and

More pervasive became the accusing dust.

A constant stream of air blew inside,

Under the door, though the windows were taped.

Thus, evening wore on into night.

Even though you came softly, climbing

Stairs with carefully restrained steps,

I knew your approach : I could feel it.

There was confinence in those steps,

Along with resolution in all you chose to do.

I regret not joining fully in what you

Offered, nor sharing back in like measure!

Now, that has passed by, leaving once-hot

Memories to rest, smothered under dust.

Perhaps it is better that way, for the

Dusty tomb of impotent memories is

Silent, and only condemns when sought

After diligently. Therefore, my fading

Memories of us cause little harm,

Only the wish I could have lived more,

Partaken of more, plunged myself into the

Hot thunderstorms offered so willingly.

Now, it all lies useless, as I feel the

Exhausted weight of spent draughts

Receding back down the empty stair-well.

My last sojourn in the decrepid building,

Lasting about three months, was barren.

Already condemned by the forces of progress,

Forces insatiably devouring the city,

The whole building lapsed further into neglect.

Twelve-month dust covered everything,

All the former trappings of habitation,

All the rooms someone had once called home.

Before my arrival, it was sterile and secluded,

Save for brief evenings of raucous fun,

Glaring ceiling lights, plastic leather sofas,

Loud music, and specially flown-in vodka.

Then he left, taking all, save a few

Enigmatic business cards in a drawer,

A bottle-cap from Ashgabad, meaningless

Scraps of paper, and complete stillness.

Over the next year, the fine dust fell,

Settling over everything – even in the drawers.

Then I came, and stepped into the rooms,

As into an inner tomb, and took up residence.

Only the area around my bed, for my feet,

Then one writing table, were dusted off.

Everything else remained under its dust,

For I wanted no association, with life’s trappings,

Or the people who came in life’s wake.

Besides, the invisible leaders, the oft-

Disembodied voices of authority, said the

Building would be torn down – in time,

New rooms would be provided for me.

At that time, the only certainty was dust.

Everything else refused any assurance.

Even the right to exist here, to live

Amidst the throngs of discontented and

Restless people, was withheld for a season.

The dust was settled. Having been sifted

By the wind, blown, injected into every corner,

It rested. I could not rest, having been

Blown out of this land, sometimes

Tormented in my own land for three years,

Then brought back to where I had started :

The old building slated for destruction.

Was it for five nights, that I became like

Dust, blown unceasingly through earth’s

Dominions, and the soul’s inner cosmos?

I will never, never condemn you for this,

For you were generous to me, way beyond

The normal, mundane measure of humanity.

I hope you live in a green world, with young

Trees around you, and unseen songbirds

In the branches. As for me, it is the

Stillness of long-settled dust on the

Floor, on the tables, that calms me.

In time, the invisible voices called to

All those who lived in the old building :

Pack up and move. We did, as best we could.

Work crews came, to haul the heavy

Furniture to my new home, a new start.

With the violence of grave-robbers

(But how could they know? For them,

It was just another “moving job”),

They tore down the carefully sealed

Curtains and prised open the windows.

Light, and fresh air, and the pure,

Unfettered voices of children playing outside

Flowed instantly into the rooms, and

Changed what they had been forever.

I looked around the new emptiness for

One last time, but it now had no more

Significance. The old security of

Old dust, of silence, of tomb’s seclusion

Was gone. It was no longer home.

The new home was in another building,

Six floors up, but even there, the

Upper tips of the branches swayed, and

Clicked against the windows, and even

There, the dust came in, as it could.

Dust remained nature’s accusing finger,

Pointed against the people’s unceasing recklessness.

Sometimes, I carried my furniture myself,

From the old home to the new one.

While laboring thus, one of the first

Harbingers of grace came to me.

She carried some boxes, along with her

Friends, gave me two oranges, then left.

For a long time, the old building stood by

Itself, condemned and ignored by all

Who passed by. The rooms of the

Other apartments grew dark and silent,

One by one, and their windows dirtier.

I could have come to visit, to see the

Building degrade, stage by stage,

To watch the scrap-iron scavengers

At work, but I did not want to see my

Home of five years thus overthrown.

It was the indespensible container of my

Life, the bowl holding a thousand memories.

So, I found ready excuses to conduct

Life elsewhere, and did not visit or look.

However, my mind, thoughts, and ready

Imagination often returned to the old building,

Especially when the demolition machines

Passed by under my window one evening.

Winter yielded to spring very slowly;

Its fingers had to be prised away from the

New year, as those of a frozen corpse.

With ephemeral spring came the wind and

Dust storms, sowing a palpably poisonous

Feeling of dread and foreboding – something

One could not explain. Even inside, the

Restlessness and violence without could be

Felt – and not feeling it directly, one

Imagined it blowing the dust of anxiety

Within one’s soul, darkness having fallen.

At least twice that year, the wind was the

Unseen yet tangible expression of

Long latent, now blossoming turmoil

In the hearts of the city’s discontented :

This night was the second unseen assault.

For several minutes, I stood in my new balcony,

Staring passively out into the darkness,

Beyond the never-washed window glass.

The wind scoured the city of anything loose,

Able to rise up into the air – the clean, and the

Unclean, catkins from the trees and all

Manner of trash – and brought it elsewhere.

Unseen particles, and the tips of the

Swaying branches clicked and knocked

Against the window panes, scratching the

Glass, yet sounding like rusty door

Hinges in staccato. I retreated deeper

Into the apartment, and closed all doors.

The next morning I went outside.

Farthing-sized wafers of sycamore,

Then is season, lay piled in heaps and

Windrows, where the buildings had

Forced the night-storm to release them.

Already, the workers were shoveling them

Into carts, as if to remove evidence.

The sycamore-wafers, dust and flecks of

Trash lay mingled together, yet spoke as one,

Condemned the people’s unremitting depredations.

Those that escaped the shovel blew around the

Courtyard, like children’s play driven too far,

Into insanity. Rising and falling so many

Times, spinning into the faces of those

Too careless to step aside, lodging into

Their hair, debunking the vain of their beauty,

Nature’s tokens flung out their final message.

At about this time, I went to the old

Building, to see what had happened to it.

In two weeks or less, the old building,

With its fifty-odd apartments, had gone.

Two other buildings had also been removed.

Above ground-level, nothing remained,

Not even walls, nothing save a slightly

Different pattern of rubble, betraying the

Faintest outline of a long rectangle.

Nearby, over the ruins of the other

Buildings, an excavator loaded brick

Rubble into a large dump truck. Soon,

There would be nothing left, nothing

Save an empty space, sharing no story.

All I take away, safe in the bowl of memory,

Is the recollection of those five nights,

Sultry, violent thunderstorms, as in Africa,

With the rain beating violently on the roof,

An old tin roof that amplifies sound, and

Drives out every other competitive emotion.

You were the only truly living thing,

Entering the building, which briefly

Warmed my heart, encouraged it to live.

Now the sanctuary of curtained-in

Rooms, silent as the tomb, and coated

Everywhere with sleeping dust, is

Forever removed. I leave for the last

Time, the demolition site, my nose

Full of plaster-dust, and with it, the

Sharp awareness of fresh orange-peel.

***************************************************

“Let Them Drink Olives.” Written: 2010/7/23 to 2010/7/25.

Plan: 1) Introduction. 2) Wine and cheese. 3) Pies and cakes. 4) Olives.

Verse One.

Going to parties among the elite,

Is clustered by duties, stifled by form.

Too often we go to say the same things,

Wear the grooves deeper, and fatten some more.

It’s a fight for survival, for peer’s recognition,

While smiling and bandying words without stress.

Yet out of all challenges present at parties,

The hardest is choosing the right thing to bring.

“Let them drink olives? You’re crazy!” they say,

But I’ll be remembered for month after month.

Verse Two.

Wine is the tribute, the homage of guests,

Established as gold, but drinkable, too.

Yet choose it amiss, and your standing will fall,

It’s a language of style, with no room for mistakes.

In similar manner is cheese the taste touchstone,

Europe’s glories arrayed on a platter.

Yet choosing it right, and not chasing form,

At low fat tables, is pungently hard!

I lack the nine graces, and haven’t good taste,

So I’ll leave them a bottle of pure olive oil.

Verse Three.

There once was a time, in heartier days,

When a pie made at home would quite steal the night.

Today, we have neither finesse nor the time,

One baked in the market is symbol enough.

Cakes are sublime, both the light and the dense,

Soaked in Madeira, and studded with nuts.

Yet the days of a cake for a florin apiece,

Are gone like the florin, and will not return.

I don’t have the time or the money to splurge,

Yet I’ll leave them a token they’ll never forget.

Verse Four.

So much of culture resides in the olive,

Of families and countries down history’s road.

Everyone civil, from Rhodes to Oporto,

Has used it in every conceivable way.

A splash on a salad, a dipping for bread,

Are but introductions to how it is used.

It binds up the pesto, enlivens linguini,

And add sunshine’s glory wherever it’s used.

Please drink my olives, eat them, I say,

For each time you use it, I’m thinking of you.

******************************************************

“On Watching The Workers Installing Polystyrene Insulation To The Sides Of A Building.”

Written: 2010/9/9 to 2010/9/10.

Note: One day, the workers were installing blocks of polystyrene insulation

to the outside surface of a tall building. Small pellets of polystyrene were snowing down everywhere.

It is cherry-blossom season again.

The small, white symbols of a new

Spring float down softly,

By the thousands,

Silent and majestic in their descent.

Over the up-pointing poplar trees,

Into the hair of passing girls,

Swirling over the uneven ground,

Searching for a new home,

Rest from air’s entrapment,

Always seeking earth, the

White petals spread out everywhere.

Round, white pellets, sawn from

Uniform flat blocks, fall through the

Setting sunlight as dust, and with

Street-dust, race up and down

Uneven pavements in fits and starts of

Restlessness, watched by indifferent bystanders.

If only it were spring,

When all things are made

Afresh, and pure.

********************************************

“At Candi Selogrio.” Written: 2011/2/2.

Note: Candi Selogrio, an ancient Hindu temple, is found at the head of a small valley of terraced rice fields, ringed by high peaks behind. It is in central Java. Not many visitors come here.

Far from overbearing eyes,

Ringed by cicada’s chant, and

Silent hills,

Does time stand still.

To the busy, unknown;

To those seeking swift eye-pleasure,

Too far into the hills;

To the lovers of enchantment,

Beyond Java’s storied rice-gardens.

The valley of rice-terraces commands attention;

From a distance, the

Temple roof is a minor grey apex,

Almost hidden among long,

Bending stalks of bamboo.

The path dwindles, the

Vision fades awhile.

Small, an oversized

Gingerbread house of portable

Sugar-blocks of rough-trimmed

Volcanic stone,

The temple stands on a clearing, of

Hand-trimmed crab-grass.

One man cares for the site,

For hours the sole witness of

Silence by day, or the tiger’s

Call by night, from the slopes above.

Nothing disturbs this place,

In any form.

Truly, those who built this place

Understood the deceptions of life,

And where to find a certain

Measure of solace.

If only we could maintain this

A little longer!

****************************************

“Mist At Dawn, Over Borobudur Valley.” Written: 2011/2/12.

Note: One mini-package tour involves reaching a vantage point by motorcycle and foot, in the dark, so as to watch the dawn and sunrise over Borobudur Temple, in central Java.

The path was slippery, unmarked.

Up we struggled, through an unseen forest,

Invisible, yet in our imaginations,

Tangled and impenetrable.

The air was cool, and the unseen

Choruses of earlier night hushed –

Hushed save for one final,

Uncertain bird.

We followed one faint, bobbing light ahead.

Trying hard to remember what it revealed,

Before the darkness

Closed in anew over the path, and we

Stepped forward by memory and trust.

The forest was silent, vast, and

Perceived in the dark by imagination.

At the top, we looked out

Over the formless valley, marked,

As by linear galaxies, by

Streetlights in the town below.

Was earth like this, long years ago,

As it rose out of mist,

Under first day’s light? The

Forest took shape, yet had no shape,

Being obscured by distance.

Hills rose out of the seas of mist,

Silent and timeless.

One by one, the streetlights were

Put out, and the valley was

Swallowed by the rising mist.

The nearby forest, free from mist,

Revealed itself under the

New, grey light of dawn.

Up the slope rose the trees,

Anchored into the soil below, and

Silence above.

The mist claimed everything,

Gave it up briefly, and rose up again.

Was earth once like this,

Silent and undefiled?

What walked the silent green ways

Among those untouched trees?

Imagination formed a tiger to run

Across a clearing, and

Disappear among the leaves.

There were no tigers.

I wanted to say, “Cry out!

Cry out your dominion over the forest!

Let your voice reach to the furthest hill, to

Every path beneath the branches!”

For a little while longer, the

Silence remained. Now, all the

Streetlights were out, and for a

Hallowed moment, the earth was

Silent and void,

As on the first day.

The distant temple rested in a

Sea-scape of mist and

Protruding hilltops.

Brief and hallowed was the moment,

Before people rose to claim the day.

***************************************************

“How Lucky You Were.” Written: 2011/2/18 to 2011/2/19.

Note: This incident happened on the second floor of a covered market in Yogyakarta, Java. The woman reminded me of a close friend. It could have been her….

How lucky you were,

To have found your man, and

With him, a new life, and sanctuary,

At the apex of your achievements.

Over the years,

I have followed your travel through life--

Now hard, now a minor miracle,

Now storm of conflict, now

Success held in your strong arms.

I am far away now,

Still in eastern abodes.

Only sometimes do I talk with you--

And then only when it is

You who call out.

Do not, however, doubt that I

Forgot you : I never shall!

It is only because of life’s

Bitterness, and the ache of

Disillusionment that I live alone now,

In remote mountain ranges of the soul,

Far from society’s ambiguous

Embrace, and desiring it less and less.

I keep alone, because it is only

There I can bear life’s existence.

Your calls, even when I am weary,

Are the tokens of love,

Over the long journey of friendship.

It is now I think of you, because

Figuratively speaking, I saw you in a

Strange marketplace, in a

Far away land….

She looked, and felt so much

Like you that I stopped my

Frenetic, aimless wanderings

Up and down the rows of produce,

Somewhere in a thronged covered

Market, and just stared.

I must call “her”, “you”!

It cannot be otherwise….

You had become thin, much

Thinner than before. Your clothes --

Tropical white and loose-fitting –

Shrouded you from shoulders to ankles.

A mere napkin of a headscarf covered you.

From behind I watched you –

It could only be you --

Unwilling to see your face.

I knew what I would find. With

Shuffling, scuffing steps, and a

Tin cup in one hand, you

Made your way along the

Vacant spaces, people making way, or

Gently pulling their little children to

One side. The sounds of the market – of

Purchase, of acquaintance, of

Little daily vignettes

Around the packing crates –

Continued unabated, as

Steady as imaginary spring

Brings in another time.

No longer shopping, I followed you indirectly,

Weaving up and down the side aisles of the

Market place, as you moved forward,

At a dirge’s pace, following your route.

I dared not come up close to you, to

Look intently at you, to hold you in

Greeting, to ask after you.

Conscious of people observing me,

I went away by another route,

Catching momentary glimpses of you

Through the hanging, flamboyant

Batiks, then losing you in the

All-enveloping sounds of the market.

Alone again,

Without partner, or child,

Known by all yet only from a distance,

You continued your way along the

Narrow aisles, past unseen tables

Covered with gaudy fruit and

Dusty yams, the tapping of your cane the

Only sound in the momentary silence.

********************************************

“The Two Winters.”

Written: 2011/10/8.

Winter is coming,

Sending its careful warnings on

Distant mountain peaks.

Irrefutable stains of white, on

Summer’s high play-fields,

Slow and relentless constriction of

Youth’s limitless vision, the snow

Steals the places I roamed.

From high summer pasture-slopes,

I looked out over everything,

Held it in my eyes, and

Searched the farthest

Corners of the valley.

All was seen;

All was beautiful.

There comes too, another winter, and

It does not hide itself.

Everyone else sees it before

You, but they are too polite

To say so. The marks

Lie on your clothing, on the

Little unkempt symbols, of

Things forgotten or neglected.

They betray a relentless

Defoliating of what you could do

Each day.

Exploits are stolen, one by one.

At least,

I wrote of these things, and

Locked memories into words,

For my feet travelled the

Four corners of Asia in their day.

Much was seen, and yes,

It was beautiful.

I sit in the valley,

Waiting for the snow to come

Down and imprison the streets,

One by one.

Let it come; I have

So many winter projects to do.

I shall receive the

Cold kiss of winter, and

Pour out ink, from bundles of pens.

From my room, I shall see,

Not the valley, but all the world.

I sit alone,

Tasting infrequent company.

When I act, I now stumble;

When I think, I walk through a new fog.

“You made your bed; now sleep in it!”

They said.

Yes indeed. I will.

In time, I will sit on sofas alone, in

Rooms of steel,

Receiving,

Embracing the

Coldness of solitude, and

Wander the years and places

Alone, from the sanctuary of my mind,

Itself diminishing.

I will do these things, for I chose

This bed, and I like it.

********************************************

“The Abandoned Yurt Site.”

Written: 2011/10/21.

High on the mountains, the

Early winter clouds

Lie in occupation. It is a

Cold, frost-smudged

Morning, and the landscape,

Almost English in its browns and greys,

Evokes distant memories. The

River runs low, but not silent.

Indeed, the only moving

Signs of life are the waters

Among the rounded river-

Stones, and the herd of milk-cows

Under the poplars,

Reduced to eating fallen,

Drying-out leaves.

Among the branches, remain

Long-lost tatters of flags. They

Hang, forgotten by all

Save the wind. The

Concrete ring of the old

Yurt-foundation is

All that remains.

Slowly, its stones are taken by the

Farmers, and the cement is

Pulverized by the careless

Hooves of cattle stepping

Over. The floor, once an

Opulent crimson, is worn

Away, chipped, sanded and strewn with

Rural detritus. It

Bears the hall-marks of any

Ruined city, only in miniature --

The river its frontier, the

Poplars its citadel, the

Music of the river its companion in

Solitude.

On long distant summers,

When the yurt was set up,

People lay down in pleasure, on

Creaking steel camp beds,

Drinking deep the sounds of the river,

Intoxicated by mare’s milk

Wine, full of the

Dreams of youth, and

Roxanna’s unquenchable desires.

Even now, amid the winter’s

Suppression, one can still hear the

Laughter, the

Cries in the night,

Mixed with the choruses of

Summer crickets, and the light

Brush of river fog on the cheeks.

Now the dreams are all gone, and

Young Roxanna,

No longer young,

Tends a shop in the northern

Shanty-town, just

Out of reach of the

River’s music of persuasion.

One by one, the

Yellowed poplar leaves

Fall down, heading

Straight for the hard earth,

Where they are eaten by the cows,

Or else lie forever untouched, unseen,

Unremarked, and brown.

The leaves do not wait, to

Fall one by one,

Romantically.

They fall in shards,

In families, at times all at once, as if

They knew there was now

No one to observe their

Passing.

Nobody visits this site,

Save the milk-cows, and the

Evening farmer… and why not?

Further up the valley,

Roxanna’s children are

Planning a new round

Of pleasure.

*************************************************

“On The Morning Walk Up Trash Alley.”

Written: 2012/7/10 and 2012/9/2.

Out of synthesis comes a new creation – or does it?

I walked one morning from my room,

My mind barely awake,

To find inspiration in the new day,

A reason for living, of necessity

Renewed at rise of sun.,

After every night’s disturbed sleep.

Up the concrete shanty-streets,

Long sprinkled in dust, and

Whatever fell off the passing trucks,

I shuffled, following my route by rote.

The time-worn, seasonally unaltered

Reminders of my neighbors passed by.

To the right, a protruding drainpipe,

Reaching out over the storm-drain,

Dripping water, as the unseen cook

Prepared breakfast for the workers,

Throwing up yet another concrete building.

Over there, a small hill once bare,

Grey, rocky and barren, but now

Very much alive, green and peaceful.

Whoever the unseen owner was, his

Art was plain to see everywhere --

Trees patiently planted and watered,

Set in holes hacked from the rock.

There on the left, a new home,

Carefully put up by a farmer’s family.

The road, or rather, back-country lane,

Was paved in heavy gravel, and

Beginning to wash out.

There again, on the left, a farmer’s garden,

Built, as a siege-works, of

Earth-filled baskets, sprouting melons.

The vines ran up the wall, over the

Packed-earth roof, and then

Over the far edge.

This was the regular route of

Contemplation, of undisturbed and

Ingrown views, which I followed,

Until the road passed along

Trash Alley, where all things were

Indeed made new,

New by the hand of people.

Everything was replaced with something else.

Unspooled cassette tape, for gossamers,

Sparkling in the morning sun.

A fetid puddle, for a pond.

Wagtails bobbing among the trash, for

Birds in the grass.

Dust, for grass.

Plastic, for stone.

The hammering chorus of anvils,

From a nearby workshop, for the

Bird’s dawn chorus.

Settled dust, kicked up, for

Settled thoughts, at peace.

Haze over the mountains, for

Mountaintop vistas.

The mountains, gouged of stone, and

Raped of their minerals, for the

Mountains, majestic.

Curs in the alleys, for an

Eagle, high in the sky.

Filth-stained sheep in dreadlocked wool,

Awaiting the knife, for a

Lone ibex on a high and distant crag.

The stench of goat-heads in the

Rendering cauldron, barely boiling, for

Faint memories of yesterday’s bouquet garni.

Shattered squares of tempered glass

Strewn on the dusty alley, for the

High veldt of dreams,

Scattered with native diamonds.

Gates locked and bolted, with furtive

Mistrustful stares through the peepholes, for

Nonchalant glances, devoid of cares.

Everything stripped by locusts, with

No concept of Eden.

There was no concept at all, but

Only a wasteland of synthesis.

Synthesis replaced everything,

Everything that once was, that the

People had once remembered.

Somehow, within those houses,

Lived really rich people, trying, but not

Completely able, to hide all the

Obvious symbols of their wealth.

My mind awake, and my

Consciousness shamefully polluted,

I walked home to face the day’s work.

**********************************************