The trees have their time-rings about them
A few concentric circles that have forgotten
Their centers, and their sap slowly emerges
Floats towards the sky and vanishes there.

 
Here the wind is still and not a leaf stirs.
And not a leaf stirs without his ordaining.
The process of ordaining is a big thought
And big thoughts remain where they are
In your time and in other people’s space.

 
There is nobody, nobody here to ordain
You know our officials are busy attending to
Other more important official businesses
Notably royal weddings in the city streets
On horse-drawn carriages with red-robed
People puffing their cheeks with fine music.

 
The barber asks looking at your time-rings
How many rings do you have, sir, as he cuts,
One two or three, and may be many more
Many more years to your bark, many rings
Like golden girdles around your fat stomach
Actually the rings disappeared long ago, now
Only a hard crust, home to the wood-pecker.

I see through the door keyhole,
A shadow playing on the wall
The shadow moves towards another
Until both become one playing
The same music of life and death
Of life-in- death, of death-in-life.

  
She sat there cross-legged,  eyes screwed up
Seeming to take a stance, somewhere in the far.
That was not a stance but energy swelling in her
In waves after waves only to break, boisterously,
On rocky shores of bleak nothing, just nothing.
Her cell phone rang fitfully interrupting smooth
Formation of shapes of future textile creations.

 
Actually the marble beauty of the mausoleum
Had smothered her inner self and left her cold,
As did this old emperor’s fabled passion for her.
A fourteenth child- birth was not for celebration
She had helped create his entity, lost her own.

(Shah Jehan had made the Taj Mahal for his queen, Mumtaz Mahal who died
giving birth to his fourteenth child)

A breeze blows on the dry leaves, 
Soft- crunching under our footfalls 
When thoughts flow in a pageant 
Their slowly crawling centipede 
Being much like a human chain.
Their poetry exists in fine words; 
Their rhythms beat alive as in life 
Their symmetry surreal and  pretty. 

Beauty-words gently fall like mist
Of December dripping from leaves. 
Our own transience feels like birds 
In the blue above green treetops. 

Now, in the summer sky’s torpor, 
We are stretching vision skyward
Until tiny luminous tadpoles swim 
In pools of tears in our raised eyes. 
Here, a dog becomes a mere image 
On the rock where it belongs, staring 
Quietly in joyful photo-luminescence.

On the banks of the River of Desire 
The abodes of our Gods are empty 
They deserted our village long ago 
Leaving behind all our  sanctums 
That crumbled through the ages .
Their broken walls yielded fine bricks 
For the masonry of our village homes. 
The River meanders around our village 
Threatening to swallow our temples .
Our children have hunger in their eyes 
We have no oil to light God’s lamps 
The River now threatens to swallow 
Our rice paddy fields and our homes.

(About the 30-odd heritage temples of Patra village near Midnapore(W.B.)  lying in neglect; Kankshavati means the River of Desire)

In the celluloid horror 
of a twelve year-old girl 
Lying spread-eagled, shrieking

You lie spread-eagled in 
the overnight Volvo sleeperette,

Re-living what all are the horrors 
in a suburban train 
of three living-dead humans 
watching a twelve year-old 
dying of love.

(A movie about the gang-rape and death of a twelve year old girl in a Mumbai suburban train)

She was shaking like a tree in the wind. 
There was this electricity passing in her

 As if she was an old knot of tangled wires.

 As if a lightning struck her from the sky

And reached down all the way to the earth.

The doctor says it is a mental thing. 
Nobody believes her .Nobody does.
I want you to say something please
Say anything. Tell a story, may be.
Say it for God’s sake. Tell me a story.

Your this silence is my utter darkness. 

I cannot breathe in such darkness.

Her eyes dilated in horror

And her words flowed in a

Cascade of fiery rebukes

And pitiful remonstrances

We had no stories to tell her.

 
At the corner house citrus fruits hung in ripe silence.
Three coconuts went in a huddle and then exchanged 
Morning notes with the unwashed house in the breeze.
A man walked as if from the sun holding plastic oil can
Of spilling waters, his other hand balancing the weight.
Another, bound in winter clothes, released bursts of smoke
From his muffler, into the air, his eyes softly closed in joy.
Like the early morning train in the countryside chugging 
Quietly as its white smoke rose to the blue mountains.
Re-assembling is making a big deal of everyday events.

We looked up at the browned finish of the temple
Its beauty spilling steadily into eager eye- space
Several nubile stone maidens looked down at us
Their beauty came down to us in machined perfection.