(for Kiran)

My mind goes back to those years Of train journeys, the wind carrying scent of manure from the fields. Black granite torsos dotting the passing Landscape, arms hauling in the nets From the abutting lagoons and lakes.

And even then, this noise of pelting Words, against my finger tips. Remember how over there the rains, those never ending epics, kept blurring Our days and nights, facts and fictions? Rain here, today, is gushing from eaves,

Carrying those encrusted worlds and words.

How can such a thing of beauty come to pass? Even this last burst of golden rod leaning Into the afternoon light and lengthening Shadow is fading. And on our earth, the mass

Of lives continue to fall as leaves, their descent Beginning right at the shoot and root. This quilt Of passages that covers our memory, is built Even as the priest preaches with certainty, ascent

To us memoirists down here, as we struggle to mend These newly torn maps, imperfectly, not understanding In what measure is our love tied to our grieving, Unable to see what is that lies beyond this bend

Where sorrow falls damp, obscuring our lines of sight. Perhaps there it blooms again, a jonquil in the snowy light.

2003:10:26 Atlanta

I went to a party to breathe poetry And came back carrying silence. A few shreds of air that a ceiling fan, Guillotined from a Georgia fall night.

I must have sleepwalked into the avenues, Seeking that rhyme, that unsolved riddle, That key to tighten the bodice of silence, With the silent pull of poems.

I handed Beth, who said she was a poet, A swimming pool of wine and got silence. My turtle tongue retreated, unable to ask her For a poem, into its carapace of language.

It is English as it can be only written in English, Yet between thought and sound, my voice Jammed, an obstinate Indian mule, unable To reach the honking geese, except in silence,

This air into which I exhale and inhale poetry.