Language Cosmos, i.e., pain raved in me with a diabolic tongue.

Searching for the above line –
	Because I am in pain,
	Pain that obliterates like winter
	Morning fog, pain that you
	Often felt and wrote about.

Though the cosmos –
	Of this book of thousand odd
	Poems of celebration and 
	Lamentation, written over 
	Nearly a century of your
	Earthy, earthly life.

I come to language –
	In this curious city of trees
	And capitalism, in a country
	You had called a moderately corrupt
	Republic once, as I riffle through 
	Your unburied, devoutly Catholic,
	Yet not dogmatic, bones again,
	And taste the lines I had underlined 
	In red ink, falling on my novice 
	Tongue like sacramental wine.

At what date did love cease? Here an old man tells me It is not summer yet even though the pavement blisters Because it is not the right date yet. If we had waited for The right moment of reckoning, would it have helped us In our groping towards some kind of resolution, fraught As it is with fear, loathing and a dash of self hate?

Now it is too late; it’s time to forget, time to depart. Trains are leaving from my station, trains of thought.

[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.