for Caatu

The first things I collected were stones. Pebbles down in the gullies through Which runoff sluiced after rains, At the edges of unsealed streets Of my childhood. Then in the wilderness Of school - if one has to have an Eden Before one falls, this satisfies my claim – I foraged in the bush for crystal, for quartz Tetrahedrons, for rocks veined with mica, Which when rubbed on one’s cheeks Made them glitter like butterfly wings.

I was obsessed with sand, with clay too. In the construction lots of a still unbuilt Concrete jungle, I shaped castles. I threw Bridges of matchstick and thread across Deep gorges of imaginary rivers. I learnt The uses of solitude and metaphor, i.e., Letting one thing stand for another as I Let fire ants stand for massing Nazis And festive firecrackers for bombs with Girly names – Daisy, Rose or such like. When and how did I become a pacifist?

To mimic progress I turned to hunting. The first victims of course were shiny Emblems of the kingdom of air: butterflies. In spring, after rains, in fields of wildflowers A mob of schoolboys trapped them with Writing pads, and carried the treasure home In pencil boxes, lunch boxes, fingers overlaid With pigments. There were also pig hunts – A local goon reared his pigs among our houses, And we took revenge by riddling them with Arrows – bamboo splits tipped with thorns.

There was also a stage of gathering. What did I gather? Velvet bugs in green wet grass, red And soft buttons, mobile on my white school shirt. Once a baby field mouse in a shoebox – Mother Wouldn’t allow me to keep it, as she didn’t allow Stray puppies with doleful eyes for more than a day. Too much work she said, and too much pain When they die, remembering her childhood deaths. Then raids for fruits: almonds that one had to crack With a substantial rock to get at the edible core. Also buds From gulmohars for squirt guns that spat sap and molten fire.

As I tell my sister this, she tells me I was a strange kid Who could be found under the trees of our backyard, Fingers caked with mud, muttering to myself audibly, At whom the neighbors looked upon kindly, with mirth, And that I am yet to cease my foolishness for pebbles, For shiny feathers, for shells, for stray pieces of wood, For dry leaves pressed between pages of old books, For anti-social tendencies that might leave me stranded, Bereft of adult friends, of lovers, of wives – an idiot child!

Thunderstorm from east, hulking dog Crawling along the Chattahoochee, You growl and gnash your teeth at me

And then as rain bends and beats the carpet Of leaves, and trees rustle their glassy skirts Amorously, I drink avidly from this cup And that cup, and then that one too With mouth bent over all the creeks Rippled with surf and heaven-seed.

I give to you my human weariness And you give me a shirt of wet fur. Freedom though is not in wearing this But in being your wild energy. I learn Not to ask for more, and even more, How to rejoice is what I am taught By woods shaking with your laughter.

You lie there ahead of me and invite Me to these fields where saints arrive Cracking open fragrant coffins of petals. I keep loafing & inviting your soul, Walt.

Notes: Walt Whitman, not that printer-bum of Manhattano, but that mythical Norse-like hero, that vagabond demi-god as J.L. Borges called him, turns another page today, hundred and fifty years after he came forth as a slow burning blue foxfire bright as northern lights, as aurora borealis, as the sexy wild omnivore who sucked the world into him, through the unprecedented revelation (Borges’s appropriate characterization, Prolouges, pp 445, Selected Non-Fictions) known to us as Leaves of Grass And even though his poetry perhaps demands careful scrutiny and close reading, the kind offered by a species called homo lit-critters, I can only offer the above muted howl in response to his barbaric yawp. Long Live Walt!