VARNAMALA


Adil Jussawalla

 

NINE POEMS ON ARRIVAL
 

Spiders infest the sky.
They are palms, you say,
hung in a web of light.

Gingerly, thinking of concealed
springs and traps, I step off the plane,
expect take-off on landing.

Garlands beheading the body
and everyone dressed in white.
Who are we ghosts of?

You. You. You.
Shaking hands. And you.

Cold hands. Cold feet. I thought
the sun would be lower here
to wash my neck in.

Contact. We talk a language of beads
along well-established wires.
The beads slide, they open, they
devour each other.

Some were important.
Is that one,
as deep and dead as the horizon?

Upset like water
I dive for my favourite tree
which is no longer there
though they've let its roots remain.

Dry clods of earth
tighten their tiny faces
in an effort to cry. Back
where I was born,
I may yet observe my own birth.
 

EVENING ON A MOUNTAIN
 

The valley sunned itself all day, its span
Curving up two foothills; then the shadows
Crossed like wings across its back; further,

Ferries embroidered a slim lake, stitching
Silk into its cotton, prows snipping...
How still it was then! the sky thin and hollow,

Deflecting the words stoned across the valley,
The ears straining at each rebound; for off,
A cloud, launched from a rock, streaked

North like a startled bird.

Halt X

I
I do not know what station this is, or why
We broke our journey; checked, here in Derbyshire,
One senses danger, disquietude only.

Pieces of smoke litter the huddled town-
Card collage on felt; no pattering movement
On roads of sliding newspaper, sidling dog.
No alighting or descending the steps of its drizzling doors.

II
Rain fell like a drizzle of fine slag
On an anonymous town in smudged Derbyshire.
I counted sixty chimneys in a quarter
The size of a burgher's courtyard, wondered at smoke
Sliding edgeways through the dawn's widening slats.

A flock of pigeons dissolved in the viscid air
Like a piece of mud in a current; 5 o'clock.
A streetlamp craned its neck for the spreading frogs.
 
 

Portal

Brahmaputra