Here is the monument –
You will remember
My monument;
The stark and lifeless
Temerity of my voice,
Which I had hoped
Stone would harbour.

My monument standing
Over the done diseases
That my body bent to; 
Over the forgotten scars
Of my body’s life;
Here is my calcium,
Stone, to drink,
Here are the buboes now
In deep clasts of quartz.

Over time my nameless edifice
Will acquire a new identity
Like a ruined temple or church;

People will still come around
Some to study, some to play –
It, being there, will change
The woods, change the land,
Maybe sprout a garden round it.

Family, friends and lovers
Will no longer add charm
To the memory of the man,
Only the monument will exist.

After the grandchildren, who
Dares burden themselves
With the heavy load of Memory?

Best that strangers lead this task –
Your historians and archeologists

Yes, the monument will no longer be mine
But is any monument ever truly ours?

Where are they ?

Where are the wild things ?

Somewhere in a ritual or habit.

Wild, still.

Inspite of the communal hunting.

Our nets and drumming cannot herd it.

We never kill it all.

 

Wild grizzly freedom is out there in the courage I never had to turn wild.

To turn tiger, jackal, no, rodent.

My heart is smaller than a mole’s. I am not half as bold.

 

For I fear and love the dark spots under the trees.

The same ones in broken down houses.

In unoccupied hospital rooms.

Something dwells there.

Something still dwells inside me.

And thank god, for that.

For a useless solitude.

Some Gods

Some gods are really weird
They need you to grow a beard

Some of them are damn hard to please
They want you down on your knees

How am I going to worship the guy
If he’s invisible, up in the sky ?

What do you reckon I’d say
When I don’t think about him all day ?

Some gods don’t like women in service
Others really make men nervous

I think we all need a time-out
From the hysteria and shouts

Give me a quiet, pensive deity
Not of the church but the laity

Give me a god of the stark winters
Give me a god of mud and splinters

Give me a god, cold like stone heaths
A god that reminds us of our soft feet,
Our soft skins, our soft tissues, our soft ideas

Green Wail

How can you think about the future on a day like this?

How can you study inside the house for a promotion?

When the warm air wants to lull away your memories and your sense of time;

I am listening to the Present present its case

In the blue jacaranda, the slow skin-breeze, drops of water.

I can’t remember the taste of bitterness, the cries of people in the bazaar, pain.

I know my father will teach me to swim in the black shining waters one day

I’ll forget the faces of Shillong, the words of poets I adore, I’ll forget my English;

When I resurface, father will row me across to the waiting grounds

There to quietly recite this prayer :

I want to give up human speech for the language of trees speaking love to the wind

I want to never be seen again as a man but a protruding rock on a hill

I invented a soul and may it always swirl in the skies over me

I pray the lichens and fungi accept me as their kin

May I never be grander than the moss on pine bark or the wiry orchids in the canopy

May I learn to be as capable as khasiana nepenthes

When I tire of the world of men,

May the green maiden embrace me

Scratch, bite, prick, and sting me

So that I may know myself;

Let the bamboo slivers have a drop of me

Let the thorn vines have a drop of me

Let my blood be familiar to all in the menagerie

Let it thaw into something warmer, kinder

Sister, when you hurt me,

Also fill me with the spirit to pull on,

Fill me with the air of your lungs,

The resolve of your stone

These I ask in your name.

Amen.