What I love is always being born. What I love is beginning always. ~ Elytis

I shall fill the ditch, which is my heart, with this clay of words

So that these lines will clutch at the ankles of someone passing over after the rains.

So that that this someone, who is passing over, will fall into the clay,

of which my heart is made of.

So that some one, moved thus from air to earth, will stay put, send down roots,

And become a tree arising out of me.

Notes: They are moving earth outside these windows this morning. I am reading poems, and doing so likewise.

After I finish inking down The evening silence into these Three or four barred stanzas – I don’t know which yet,

I shall sit in half lotus, turn off The lamp shining on this page, On this word, on this silence, And close my eyes to watch

The casual to and fro drift Of thoughts, just as I am doing Right now in this line, which may Next turn to consider the weight of my

Loneliness or that distant woman’s ache, Which I want to press into my chest, Where this morning, shaving, I saw Few flecks of white. How the body

Records what the mind forgets; The gurgle of time, the rustle of Breath, both which will flow on, After this poem gets forgotten, After daylight outside flails and fades.

Typist Notes: Even though I am one of the heathen (or in German "heiden") Bach refers to in one of his Sacred Cantatas that is currently playing, this is still some of most divine music ever written - the Western Cannon's response to Carnatic's Thyagaraja Keerthis, even though the theology is a little screwed up. Also thanks to Herr Jesu (Zorba's echo: and the Devil too!) for the fantastic music collection Dekalb Public Library offers free, to the saved and the heathen alike. Also growing up Illayaraja's "How To Name It" was a tape I played repeatedly. I still have that fifteen year old tape with me. Only now I see how much of Bach was brought over by Illu into Indian film music via, as KKK was fond of pointing out, classical ragas!!

Dusk, the time when light falls Down the staircase of stars and Rolls onto to the other side

This was the time in the dream I saw (Created & participated in too?) A few minutes before, today at dawn.

It had to be India because Of that smell – burning rubber mixed With strands of jasmine buds sold roadside.

You wore a strand in your hair, Khol darkened your already dark eyes, A black sun covered your third eye.

The dress was kadhi – rough like your Laughter and intimate like your love. I encountered you thus, as you were leading

A line of demonstrators. What they were Demonstrating for or against, I can’t say, For none were shouting slogans or waving flags.

I waved to catch your eye. And you turned, As one turns on TV, towards a popping flash And coolly went your way, into a wall and

Disappeared between the legs of a gyrating hero Of a garish cinema mural painted on that wall. And since I am never content with things

As they are and need explanations, I went to him, That friend you and I haven’t heard from in years. But he kept walking down an avenue of falling leaves

Not turning around, as if he was deaf or I was A mute, shouting without sound. I woke up then And began to write this down, thinking How absurd this dream was, and how true!