What would you call for: splendour, catastrophe, or both?

*

Afterwards, the archipelago runs aground in bloated water, the water burns our feet.

The ribs of caulked boats scattered high on the beach.

Spangled clouds dimming in a raw trench.

You hold out your hand. The tide’s practising its roar.

*

Walk like a wave.

Without casting a shadow

on the surf, brace and reel in

the great horned fish

that has mocked and nothinged

our bait, has never been beached

on this narrow island

of what we know.

Highway Prayer

If you’re writing a fresh anthem

for the one scorched island

marooned in cyclone country,

be sure to put in a line

about burnt tyres and sleeping dogs

and another line on the flags, curtains,

TV screens, more flags, all the shrouds

the islanders are hanging up

to protect themselves from the world.

They need a saviour.

That’ll be the man in the red raincoat

falling through an open door.

An unseen hand stops him, props him up.

He blocks the door, a crucifix

barring the passage of time.

Time burns right through him.

He clutches at his burst stomach,

crouching on the sidewalk,

holding fast to the creased memory

of a river he once loved.

In him the shimmer is great,

greater than panic,

greater than the fear of flies,

of stakes, of exploding shells,

of ending up as roadkill.

Tongue-tied, he reads

this Rosetta of violence:

this highway across which

sirens call to knotted prophets,

Batmen to Jokers, Jets to Sharks.

Bless me ivories, the land pirate says

at last, shiver me timbers.

In this place that found me empty,

in this place that found me parched,

I am blood, I am grief,

I am the returning rocket,

I am contrary to the commonwealth.

Lord of the booming antlers

on a yellow signboard,

let go, he calls out, let go.

Craft me into this totality

that never closes.

II

POONA TRAFFIC SHOTS

Poona Traffic Shots

June 1991–July 2014

I.

No trench coat saves me from the scattershot rain

that pelts me as I ride pillion on a scooter

snarled in a spiral

nebula of traffic.

No helmet shields my head from the scattershot

rain as I wait my turn to be

gunned down by the militant amber

eye of the signal.

I lock my crosshairs on peepal trees

levered in the bricked-up windows

of haggard barracks that cancel out all impulse

to return volley.

So renouncing

the counter-violence of bombing runs, a monk

on Ashoka’s hyphenating missions,

I phrase my peace in tamarind seeds

and offer it to the peacocks and deer

painted on the loud wall of a park. And tabulate,

as I wait for green,

the rainfall per square inch of skin.

II.

Telegraph wires skittle wet pigeons, short-circuit

in puddled potholes.

The wheels churning below us blow up

on impact with cratered asphalt like the three worlds

on impact with Shiva’s rage.

We race, we skid, I almost rise