Silk & Underwear

Silk

An Aprilness touched me twice
dug its pencil-heel in my eyes

Today was a perfect spring day. Cloudless. Spring-buds on every tree, though closed. Two more days of this light and heat and springtune will swirl out of them.

Praeclaraus secundum nex

A spring-molecule, speed - the third of light, hits me, and my shadow, my unorbiting travels to you. Energy that is generated when the shadow returns to its original orbit will make this poem glow.

April 25th

I want to cleave my head in half and want to show you the void. I and my poetry, born from the same source have traveled to two opposite poles.

A moth sits on the new lamp. It’s just April, where did the cocoon form? Will it live till June? They live only for two weeks! “Sabya” gets funny. Bring the book, bring the book. What’s the Family? Genus? Is it an early one ? A new species ? OMG, we are famous ! A Swedish spring where the sun stays up late, even at 10 in the evening. A small hill outside my kitchen window. The old gnarled oaks, strapping birches. Sabya says – remember Bolpur in July ? The sericulture farm ? Crows flying, a feast in the air, silk-season. Cocoons, scales, bargaining. Where will the cocoons go ? The handloom, spun-silk. Silk on lady’s bags, shirts, winter scarves.
- Sabya, am I a moth ?
- What ! you don’t have faith in old Mr. Darwin any more ?
- Seriously Sabya, am I a moth?

I do not walk together with my art. From a source we both are born and then the art travels its own way and I mine. There is nothing before or after. Just two different directions. Poetry follows its own urge and I my own, to live and recreate. What happens to the origin? Does it survive? What happens to the notes of creation? Does it get immersed in boiling water and turn into a bubble ? No one remembers the note Sabya, no one understands its tongue. When you come back to the origin, what do you see? A void in the skin of water? A void ? An emptiness? With every poem a recurrence? How many times do you have to come back to such sorrow? Pathos ! Pathos !

The moth flew towards July, its
meanings towards November
and the notes of its moulting hormone
bubbled through water.

As if monoliths were hewn from empty people
transmitting a recurrence
As if recurrence was a lamentation and
we lost its meaning in our own emptiness.

Lost ! for habit has its own way of
dealing with consciousness
and fear is an essential that molds habit.
Lost, for loss is a word that recurs without mercy.

We could identify our jerseys
only in the dialect of a broken mirror
and time became an evening wash
we put on our faces and went to bed.

Think of a magic that is devoid of reality
A reality that’s emptied of magic

Think, what does it take – fear/habit/loss-
for our granaries to moult.
And heaving enormous diaphragms,
gleaming wings, the meanings of moth
fly into a surgical table.



About points and a pair of clean underwear

Problem is, a point is thinking about me
while I am trying to think about points
separately, one by one, without a line connecting line
any linear equations
and thus couldn’t dry my clothes
Well, not a problem though, you won’t want your dirty linen washed
in the pub
My father used to say – It’s imperative that one wears clean undergarments.
Dying in a dirty one could shame you to death.
I knew, a point is thinking about me
since I am thinking about points.
They have dug up the roads
heavy rains
heaping soil
flowing soil
mud beach
sewage river.
I can’t,
so the window weeps.
I wouldn’t have believed a few days ago
how believable incoherence could be
until we attempt to describe it in our limp language.
What color a point should carry –
Let the point’s infinitesimal smallness decide that
Here, coconut groves
ocean
an oblong moon
doesn’t exist
A green dot beside a
blue one
a distant purple dot
a smoking “Sabya”
a red dot
glowing
ebbing
NO LINES


Does a point see me and other points
this way ?


You would think
step by step a picture is made,
a man.
By putting your chin on your palm
you build leisure
By putting yourself in leisure
you build reflections
a past
a future.


And a point thinks
how the sound of a bomb detonating
outside your window
would travel from your skin
to create an instant new past and future


Beside an ultra-violet dot
I lay my clothes, still smelling of scrub-soap
on grasses
where
I have lost
a teak forest
a bungalow
a water-well with bougainvillea
not in absent-mindedness
but in purposeful certainty.
Is regret the first true consciousness ?
Is remorse the first sign of intellect ?
My window would only reflect me
wet, broken
desperately in search of a tune to repair itself.


Does the point want to say –
“Sabya, Sabya – lines and melodies are unnecessary
as both want to communicate”.
I feel the need to urinate
I know in wet and cold visceral blood circulation increases.
Yet, I want to follow the melody to that
great and earthly motel
where in a white bathtub
flows a stream of yellow
in its true wholeness.
Is stream a line too with an extra dimension of fluidity?
Oh cerebrum ! the right or the left
where do I put my stream ?
Where does the stream become a stone ?
The stone, that I am looking upon.
Me, the stone is looking at.
As I change my viewing angle
you change your color, texture.
I too change my color, texture
from your angle – isn’t it ?
A changed me I will see you.
A changed you, you will see me.
I am “Sabya” and I am the stone.
But irrespective of everything
My underwear is vocal, pure and clean.