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

Male Voice: A single dream I have seen many times over You had tied the keys to my house to your sari’s end And came strolling by, just like that, holding my hand. A single dream...

Arranging flowers on the bed, I have seen you many times over And many times over, have I woken you up from the same bed A single dream…

Humming to yourself, after bathing From your wet hair, dripping drops Over my distracted face willfully, you naughty girl! A single dream...

Over playing cards, quarrelling vehemently over a game And sometimes quarrelling, as if you were playing with me. And then holding an infant in your lap....

Female Voice: Will you shut up?

Laughter

Male Voice continues: And you know Tiku, when I see this dream about you I, who was dead in sleep, feel as if I am waking up.

A translation from a Hindustani Film Lyric