with our new brothers,

let us not burden them with stories

of war or abandonment.

Let us not name our old friends

who are unravelling like fairy tales

in the forests of the dead.

Naming them will not bring them back.

Let us stay here, and wait for the future

to arrive, for grandchildren to speak

in forked tongues about the country

we once came from.

Tell us about it, they might ask.

And you might consider telling them

of the sky and the coffee beans,

the small white houses and dusty streets.

You might set your memory afloat

like a paper boat down a river.

You might pray that the paper

whispers your story to the water,

that the water sings it to the trees,

that the trees howl and howl

it to the leaves. If you keep still

and do not speak, you might hear

your whole life fill the world

until the wind is the only word.

Madras Morning

It is early in Madras

and the temple priests are busy

with their morning prayers

like the walkers and the joggers

and the coffee makers at Hi-Cool

and Re-Lax and Maheshwari Snacks

and the bus drivers and taxi drivers

who’ve left their dreams in bed

and the vegetable sellers

and the call-centre boys and girls

who are practising their accents

on their way to work

and the construction workers

with thermometer-shaped legs

and the air hostesses in green

comparing heels

and the stewards and the clerks

in brass-buttoned coats

and the Air India pilots

sneaking their last smoke

and we who’ve kissed

the children goodbye

and left instructions

with the maid

we who don’t know

how easily the world

moves without us

we are sitting upright in chairs

balancing trays on our knees

eating the air

Lesson 5: Saying Goodbye to Love in Butoh Class

To begin we are one-celled creatures —

blind, wildly incompetent, pawing about

in the waters of the dark. Then we grow

spines, limbs, feel the ghost movement

in our coccyges — the memory of tails.

There is such a thing as tiger life —

a primitive pattern of the universe

imprinted in our hearts. We may walk

with lotus flowers in our palms,

a forest of cherry blossoms bursting

from our heads, shoulders, arms,

but sooner or later we will have to know

the earth, to understand bereft.

Sooner or later, we will have to confront

the charred corpse of a cedar tree,

an orphaned child, a friend in the rubble

dying slowly, terribly. What should we say?

How should we mend these fissures

of loss when the wind howls so,

when we can hear death coming for us?

Learn to embrace the past. Yes, learn

to embrace. But when the past arrives,

cloaked with forgotten smells, the smooth,

musky assault of it on our bodies,

all I see is love — another and another,

carrying his own elixir

of ocean oil bone.

I fix my gaze, breathe–let go–breathe.

They come wearing bells. They will not leave