Poem

The poem had white-washed walls,
and long, stately coconut leaves.
On the poem's head were bright, red
roof-tiles standing silently in the rain.
The poem's walls were made of stone
and its thick pillars dreamt.
You met me there, by its pillars,
once long ago...
Words held out their hands to the rain.
Inside other thoughts hummed and slept.
Then the poem drowned out like water
and was left to stand crumpled in the rain.
It could still be standing there...
Round the corner as you turn
You might come upon it
Someday face-to-face
To live in it one more time
and find yourself again.

Poem

At the window with the sunlight
and the shadows flashing past.
And at night, the blue wind rising.
Every hour keeps its rendezvous
on the page.
In deep afternoon,
with the cackle and the dead paint
and the air thickening, when all
soon becomes a blur; then sometimes
those evenings visit,
compressed with its pleasures.
When you remember where
you sat on the grass
and you can feel it...or almost
How the trees stayed hushed
and the cars on the road
dead for a thousand years.
Then in the deep and dark evening
with the rain pouring down,
you woke up
and embraced the moonlight.

Poem

The tall buildings stood like
smoke in the night.
You thought of other things.
In another time, another place...
Then the wind brings it with her
You turn to see the room
The music blaring through the speakers.
Laughter heard that woke you up
with a hand on your face.
Then you remember the children
How they held hands
and walked through the grass.
The little one who guided your steps
And took you to the water
Where you saw the moon floating...
The angel that showed you the way
took you home where you saw
the light hovering over the bones.

A death

I am a small boy
probably flying a kite
with a friend on a
terrace. It is evening;
and the mood is gloomy.
A friend's mother has
just died and all the
yellow-and-green buildings
around are sunk in gloom.
The trees sway lightly in
the dark-coloured breeze and
mutter their acknowledgement of
sorrow. I think about
the finality of death, and
can't grasp it. It is the
blackness pouring out of a house,
through its green grills,
something unspeakable,
something unknowable.
The world shut in its gloom,
All locked out of heaven.

Water (Fragment)

The sound of it sloshing in buckets
to the whoosh of the ocean drying
our thoughts like dirty clothes...
All the tanks that I've stepped in...

Poem

And now it is all enough,
because all the empty chairs
with their voices of deceit
must cease;
And the slight tremors
that shake the ground under my feet
and shake my brain in my head
has stirred up this telephone
into a noisy declaration
It is time...
It is time to go into the grey beyond.

The dream of strangers
gathering in the darkness
under the trees;
And the bus passing by,
the people all a hum
And the sky comes in,
Full in view
the blue marble of a different world
That always knew you
and was you,
That is how life goes
Just like that.

Like a wedged hut of leaves and coir
in the afternoon sands of some life
of mine; toddy and rusted iron in
the breeze; dark grained hands
grind the stone; and the afternoon
light carries it zig-zag to where
my mind is still and still floating
there in my childhood sands of time.

When the garden caught fire
and the dark air of the windows and doors
of the hostel opposite just preferred to watch
the birds flying above took off
to tell the tree-lined streets
that they were done with life
that it did not matter anymore
where they stayed, whose nests
they lived in. Because they sang to one another
that all umbrellas on rainy days got
wet and urchins just went about
minding their own business.