once i
took to my roots
they claimed parsimony
a misspelt patrimony
a submission to the ordering of the other –
“An abhorrent sentimentality is
to ardor as angst is to the coffin’s
thievery” – attributed to the late
(ir)reverend bhakti seth
mir fakhr-e-doodhsiyahi, the
last soothnaysayer of Gujrat.
i-
to eke harmony
order has to be hacked off
to sing
the ode must die
to speak tree
growthspurt will give way
to song
the words of thisdom
ii-
the wound communes begins
to knead the agreements of
heal
i. take three handfuls of love & make it grass – i
flung the grass and love of grass made it whole –
which sun
was born? ii. lift wind lift chasm of fire lift
hammer – three voices to know your master, one
anvil to
forge the nail iii. many warrior faces mark this red
the ax knows the south as the blood
of leaves
know all of west – east turns clockwise thrice
With the largeness of waking
ash settles with the wood
of my wisdom, I banish
The remnants of forgetting &
leech morning sap as blue
rain whistles care, I devour
Wonder –
Took fire, burnt hole in
the sky
& it singed
Took the torn poem, wrung its
Stem & tooth – & it singed
Took
time to task
wrung its nouns & herbs & it
Singed
1,
What is abode but the transformation of
bother what is hark but
the banter of the few what is
bother but the
rose badly translated what is
given who
chose why
bother?
2,
The streak of the butterfly
has found its
moth
its
rest the sun will now learn to speak
If I fly
will the ground of
morning be meaning
again? will the material
world wag its
Finger at
me? would knowing
wear its loss to forget?
will the fear of flight
settle & would
Remnants of chirp air their unhinged crimson?
When the poem stops its breath for
lack of want it will
shut out the four corners of earth &
wander,
restrained –
When the poem tears its luck out of
lack of want it will
dance to the tune of the four
silences,
restrained –
Some night precludes dawn
in its severance in its
walled
Temper, the
stare of morning touches the ball of night –
whisper then we sing to the hum of
this bee which lets
your night become
my wall
It took an hour
to make song another hour
for stone the river
& stone are conjugate verbs
acting together
to make the verdict of song
ring true
—
“I have always had the sense of Armageddon and it was much stronger in those days, the sense of living on the edge of chaos. Not just personally, but on the world level. That we were dying, that we were killing our world — that sense had always been with me. That whatever I was doing, whatever we were doing that was creative and right, functioned to hold us from going over the edge. That this was the most we could do while we constructed some saner future.” – Audre Lorde recalling when she had heard of Martin Luther King’s killing.
