I don't know politics but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Every one of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don't You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the Incoherent mutterings of the blazing Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair. When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me But my sad woman-body felt so beaten. The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank Pitifully. Then I wore a shirt and my Brother's trousers, cut my hair short and ignored My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl, Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh, Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit On walls or peep in through our' lace-draped windows. Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to Choose a name, a role. Don't play pretending games. Don't play at schizophrenia or be a Nympho. Don't cry embarrassingly loud when Jilted in love, I met a man, loved him. Call Him not by any name, he is every man Who wants a woman, just as I am every Woman who seeks love. In him the hungry haste Of rivers, in me the ocean's tireless Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone, The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I; in this world, he is tightly packed like the Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then feel shame, it is I, dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

There is at least one pair in every thrift shop in America, molded in plastic or plaster of paris and glued to a plaque, or printed in church pamphlet colors and framed under glass. Today I saw a pair made out of lightweight wire stretched over a pattern of finishing nails. this is the way faith goes from door to door, cast out of one and welcomed at another. A butterfly presses its wings like that as it rests between flowers.

Notes: I was asked to accompany my friend T to a book signing earlier this evening as he wanted me to meet a theologian friend of his. She had just written a memoir on leaving organized church for a more personal religion. As he was waiting in line to get his books signed (one of which was for me), I was looking at the small poetry rack they had in the store, and in this process picked up Ted Kooser's latest volume "Delights & Shadows".