You shall receive (and I shall give) A walk into a thunderstorm Along a rail line, skipping Over ties black with use and grease, Feathers edged like knifes shed By Canada Geese, an untrodden meadow Of wildflowers in the middle Of a wood, and from there a view Of a lake with waters crinkled like The corners of your laughing eyes, black Dragonflies mating over the waters, a week old Beard like fine sandpaper polishing Your skin music in smoky dives, babel Of foreign souks, warm bread and knife, A house propped with books – setting A stage for us to converse in Shakespeare, An occasional quarrel with banging doors For rifle shots, a narrow bed in which we Have to lie on our sides, like two mirrors, To fit, a ceaseless turning towards you In desire, need and love, poems Without endings including This one…

Starting yesterday evening Into this morning, the silvery mesh Covering the windowpane keeps expanding.

You too have taken as many breaths (beating to the unsteady measure of time) And have woven new cells into your skin.

Who would have thought that we too Are but a fractal of repeating webs? Begin with the spun threads of DNA,

That code replicated in how memory interweaves, In how lives intersect, separate and then twang With joy and sorrow, in the light, in the dark.

In a quiet room, in the middle of summer, I have read the news you had sent.

You are embarking on a journey to the country Of marriage. There Time's wheel will turn again.

And there the old will become new again, And the codicils will open to a new page.

There write of music, and the darkness between the notes. There write of love, and the suffering that is its twin.

Let your lives, now hinged in seperate selves, Close and open as one, like shutters of a high window,

So that between you there is enough sun and rain, So that within you there is space for the other's refrain.

And that I, the stranger who is in you, on walking out some night Can see and rejoice in your love's overflowing delight.

For Kutti