color song

white as the perspired block, black
           as tame spiders, red as the
           withered leaf on mooncall,
brown as daybreak tending rivers -

tethered night

to think the night kind is to believe in
      song    say it is kind, but not so loud

in an other song, you can hear it think
      but not as loud    it is kind, this night

with lost dream and lost language    bereft 
       song, lost to kindness and dream -

---

night with its many deaths is a song
       read with the eye of a pen dipped

in unfettered ink  with a hunger leavened
       and fit to taste - remnants of what

I knew but longed to dislodge from
       arid haunts & inarticulate wounds -

---

if the tethering of night to stillness
        were a given, I could believe in

riversand enough to conjure up the
        absence of sky - if imaginings 

of the tether were to roam skysand
        I could believe again in riversong -

the moth of beginnings

the castle, most watered down, shrieks -
          its bottom spared the moth of 
          beginnings, it hums an ancient
bawl

the river, riven in its gutted wear, bends -
          its weave turned in to speak of
          beginnings, it gnaws an ancient
crawl

doors that are voices

see me through doors that are voices
        carrying asphalt when it should be
        loam    -   dream me through doors

that are voices, silting hue  -   when 
        will the sun sit with me, remember
        sunken sky & play with half-lives?

see me through lives that are doors
         that are voices carrying the silt of
         days, banks that are salt & hue -

the burden of ghosts

how much burden do the ghosts of everyday scars
         carry?    the faint smell of their nonpresence is

all it takes to weigh down their mourn     theirs
          is the past and the circle    theirs is the next

day and the next rounding off the circle      the scars
          of nonbeing go about their childlike ways

tracking noons fearing the thought of the coming
          dark and the next     & the weight of it all - 

---

In gorges, dragons voice age-old explanations.
In pools ten hundred feet deep, you hear them.

Cruel waves keep strict accounts, drinking
blood to nurture children and grandchildren,

but without ancient Kao Yao’s gentle justice,
feasting on prison-drowned spirits is empty.

Something there, mystery haunting darkness,
the futile talk of ghosts goes on and ever on,

gorges hearing cascades cry lament, gorges
mourning widowed gibbons. There’s nothing

human in the sound of gorges, gorges where
blades of churning water slice at themselves,

and now, sage hearts all hidden away here,
who marshals these bitter and drowned pleas?

- Meng Chiao, from Laments of the Gorges

The tidyness of verse

The tidyness of verse:
        grain that is smaller than earth's
        witnessing girth     home that is

Larger than the pronouns
         of wasted wish      sound that is
         vice, skin and rupture      this is

The tidyness of verse
       sharp as the smell of knowing
       the birth of grain, home & sound -

the loneliness of Meeraji

what seeks the would of war, the hallowed gorge1 &
           spill of light in want of
           light?2    the seethe that seeks

the feel of night      furiously free, joyously I3
          seek alone the crux of
          flight    who seeks the should of war?

---

(1)
Who can welcome laments of the gorges,
gorges saying What will come will come.
- Meng Chiao, from "Laments of the Gorges"

(2)
I hear it singing, / I sit up, awake. / It is a mountain rising, / lovely and immense.
I see myself / in the shine of it / and I want light.
I am full / with greed. Give to me
light.
– Linda Hogan

(3)
maiN hooN aazaad —- mujhe fikar naheeN hai koi
aik ghanghor sakooN, aik kaDi tanhaai
mera andoKhta hai –
– Meeraji

the hallowed veil

what seeks the retch of war, the hallowed veil & 
           tempered scream of make &
           remake?      the seethe that seeks

the harm of arms   those arms that brook no care
           to take, retake and build &
           bake      who seeks the retch of war?

parable illegit

protector of secrets1, harbinger, truth-in-stain 
      as the scream that wills 
      as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone
      rolling threads of incomprehension
      So that in the depths of the darkest night
      The sun shines forever a

tell us that story again2, of the flow and its night
      as the sandgrain that wills
      as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone
      rolling waves of inconstancy
      So that in the depths of the darkest night
      The sun shines forever 

worshiping love alone3, subsisting in subsistence 
     alone, so that in the depths 
     of the darkest night, the sun shines 
     forever - harbinger, truth-in-stain
     parable illegit as a mountain-stone, I,
     sandgrain, subsist, scream -

---

(1)
qudrat ke puraane bhedoN may jo bhaid chhupaae chhup na sakay, is bhaid ki tu rakhwaali hai

– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji

(a)
So that in the depths of the darkest night
The sun shines forever

– from ‘Songs That Cannot Be Silenced’ by Hien Luong from Vietnam

(2)
puraani kahaani may kya lutf aae, hamay aaj kis nay kaha tha — puraani kahaani sunaao

– from ‘aik thee aurat’ by Meeraji

(3)
jo chaahay reet ki baat kahay, hum peet hi ke matwaalay haiN

– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji

Gratitude lost

Used to be the bird settled down on the green you sowed, its chirp saying thanks    Gaia glad    now when it perches on some green, there is a riddle for the sky - and you - to solve    how can the bird even speak to the sun's flare with such flutter?    Gaia spins an urgent tale    no sooner has it been said than the words are felt futile   then forgotten

koi kahe ye kis ne kaha tha, keh do jo kuch kehna hai
meeraji keh kar pachtaaya aur phir kehna bhool gaya

who said say what you have to say?
I said, regretted, then forgot to say

Meeraji