Poetry | Deepa Onkar

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