By noon the summer sun has wiped dry rain’s sibilant face.
Last night, even her mirrors recoiled from my expectant face.

At that station where trains disappear at the bend and leave no trace,
Clutching a (false?) telegram I pace for his return, for his radiant face
I slashed the price on this discounted heart – it is free now, like grace,
As I lifted my singed hand from Beloved’s “love you? I can’t” face.
A sphere with center everywhere and circumference nowhere, absolute space:
God even if you are only this, I insist on an encounter with your redundant face.
O Sashi, why do you always wander back to this mound of bricks, this burnt place?
Why do you, even as you don’t believe, at muezzin’s call, wash your hesitant face?
Notes:


Muslims before prayers are required to carry out a ritual cleansing –
washing the face is one of the steps in this process.


“A sphere with center everywhere and circumference nowhere”
was taken from J.L. Borges’s essay ‘Pascal’s Sphere’, which is included
in his book ‘Other Inquisitions’.






My Poems