O Rose Thou Art Sick: by Geetanjali Joshi
Kondana caves
I didn’t touch the smooth
shining skin of the wall. It spreads
now, in memory – thick and grey
like an elephant’s. Dancing girls
and grills floated far above.
I lie on a mat, the floor flecked
with moonlight
I remember the mouth,
almost covered with branches, leaves.
The sunshine. In a photograph,
the brightness of paddy
The long climb, my reined-
in breath. You, bent on deciphering
the thorns, the airy curling scripts
of the wilderness – as if history
would vanish in a moment
A street lamp comes on –
the splayed shadows of palms
shake the dark. I toss –
in my body’s lexicon
it means I am missing something
Sleep closes in
trunk limbs ankles turn
heavy as stone.
There is the squelch
of flesh: clay, mingling with pulsing
vines. Feet sink
I excavate myself before
a dream can find me
exhale, with a vagrant’s
quietude
The heart of the cave
soft folded tissue
of light, is close
Ritual
at Sefton Park
You
press the lighter
there
is a whir –
and
hold, a flickering,
heat
snuffed out.
And
again: sparks fly, gutter
Under
this plane
tree,
endless stretches
of grass and sky
The
stick
–
and I – wait
.
The
quiet rhododendrons
have
assembled,
petals
like flickering lamps
by
oaks. Such invitation
in
the sparkle of things:
I
want to take a chance,
make
friends with the moss
the
sculpted roots and stones
And
now the body bucks
to
the wind –
thoughts
about home whirl
insistent,
daisy petals around a sun
The
pale nub at your thumb’s edge
catches.
A fluttering
flame
arrives as if on a whim,
on
a scented wave redolent
of
musk. The centuries curl:
perhaps
there are buddhas
between
those trunks.
In
the distance, sounds:
the
certain, useless shapes
of
voices, and laughter.
You
and I – we
steady
the dimensions –
nameless
trees thicken
and
crowd in hushed spaces
to
watch
Evening, Besant Nagar
What is it that nudges me along
the wet expanse of the shore?
Deliberately, across crabs’
claws, tiny gleam of shells. Thin
watery veils threaten to grab
at my toes. Girls in salwars run.
A whisper-wind tickling
a bend of skin now merges
with the roar of waves,
circles unruly sparks from
the corn vendor’s machine.
Clouds bordering on orange
hint at darkness.
Let me be still:
this drowning is pleasant.
Rain song
Let me begin with a memory.
There was rain in Pathum Thani
thick and torrential, a measure
of regret – what a way I’d come –
But also of love: the signs everywhere
wet roads like braided hair
come open, pitted with jasmine,
the scent of wood-smoke mingling
with sweat. Those happy corollaries
of routine – the hiss outside
the kitchen window
like fat on fire; the drum of slow
big drops to the kettle’s whine
How easy it was to slide
into mundaneness: coffee later
at Hom krun, shopping, run
Now, the curtains open, I listen
to the steely drone of this
unseasonal
September Madras shower.
A Palmyra’s fingers curl back from
glass. I wonder what to make of
the image of your shoulder-blades
poised against the dim, filtered light
Perhaps you will walk over
to where I sit, as if you’ve read
the wisps of my whims. But
a roar is breaking in –
bedraggled crows sidle away
in surprise. The widening light
stills the body, holds breath back
We look, as grass and mud are sundered:
the gush, trickle, swallow
we look and look – find it in us
to ask what rain might be
Art of seeing
I want to say something
about the light Vermeer
painted over the kitchen maid’s
head: the tilt of it, the poured
milk. The lapis fingers
of the Picasso mother
lifted, held, for decades –
How the room itself
seems to lapse into
stillness. The furniture
congealed with sunlight
van Iykes, van Goghs,
Rouaults, collect dust:
disuse on the way to doubt
Tomorrow we move.
I brush past
these far-flung lives –
belief in them thins like slices
of late afternoon light
on the walls, the floor.
That chair in the sun
is unframed of chairness.
The house, in a limbo
of moving trucks and vans.
Out the window,
the speeding sky. Nude clouds
skim the skies
with hope, earth with rain
The mirror says I change
a little, each day. Perhaps
the heart finds a home
in something other
than permanence.
Memories toss on the pillow
I cross over to the moment
drawn to newer sights:
the moon frees itself from
bare listless trees.
Love, of late
These shapes you don’t know
of, scatter a map of love
among the furniture – can openers,
beer bottles. A red sports shirt –
You think of telephone conversations
that caused the borders of continents
to slip. The things that just are:
the muliebrity of handspun
the remembered scent of jasmine
this early morning dew-light on the lawn
You survived
nights, strange cities
those breathless explorations
that turned into hesitation
Oddly, a song breaks through
your lips. Go, love
the brightening colours
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