[A] Morning alarm

I wake up to a booming
sound – anybody there?
	Anybody there,

in the dark kitchen, next to the warm
stove, pounding fragrant spices
in the granite mortar and pestle?
When eyes open fully and focus
on the dim light coming from the windows,
only a stale smell of beer, and snow
laden boughs crashing.
[B] First acts
While coffee is brewing, gray black
like this dawn,
the white pages of
Kuruntokai fall open on my lap
like a split glass of warm milk.
Why am I reading this,
first thing after waking, turning
pages with fingers colored ghostly
yellow, smelling of turmeric
and sandalwood?
At whose wedding was I throwing
auspicious rice in blessing?
In what                                dream?
[C] Stepping out
The woods are clamped shut
in the vice of winter
stillness.
Blue hands, cold hands
part the brambles on the path,
Part the green branches
of her robe
and reach for her mango breasts.
Listen.
Isn’t that the koel that moaned
All summer in the hollow of
Banalata’s throat?
[D] Watching the Falls
Clouds are unloading their burdens
here. Ice drops recoil from my face,
glittering like river sand, like freshly
unhusked rice.
Air too cold, too clean
to breathe.
Where are all those cities
of shit and sweat? Where are our
bodies bound tight by thick ropes
of monsoon rains and the delicate
aromas of the love juices?
[E] Gliding over
Frost had killed all the flowers
long ago.
Now everything is shriveled up.
The pond froze over last night,
and is now thick with ice.
I glide over
freed from walking.
Yet under my feet I see my
stupid, fishy heart darting
about for crumbs,
which her hands
may have dropped, long ago.
[F] Coming to a stop
Like a frentic Christmas shopper,
I will have to chase baubles under neon
Lights: blues, greens, golds.
I can only come to rest
When I see your eyes across
a table -
moist black stones
sunk in a stream thick with
jasmine,
shaped like the flames
of earthen lamps filled with ghee -
in this now dark
city of electric sighs.

A woman is sitting in front of a mirror. Her speech is completely incoherent. Interspersed between the strings of nonsense syllables are meaningful sentences with precise information such as the bus number that brought her from one side of the border to the other. The woman is drawing grotesque designs on her body, registering these only in the mirror. She says she is designing a body that is appropriate for the time, for in those days, she says, women had to grow two stomachs, one was the normal one and the second was for them to be able to bear the fruits of violence within themselves ~ Sadat Hasan Manto

And an exile has to grow two bodies to hold the torment of seperation in one, and to live using the other...

Evening clouds are headed in that direction. I stand here alone, with a heart afriad. You left for places unseen. Since then no rest or end. My dear, my mouth can't give voice to All these sighs, this restless pacing.

If you are not here, my dear, I Am a lost ember, turning coldly into ash Distant from the fire. What tracks did you leave departing? My eyes now hurt sifting through the heaped dust. My dear, my mouth can't give voice to All these sighs, this restless pacing.

A version of a lyric in Hindustani, that has been playing in my head for weeks now. Sound here: www.musicindiaonline.com