Go, wait for every cloud of rain.
She comes to you in shroud of rain.
Her eyes are childish, drizzling glee.
Her smile’s maternal, proud of rain.
She doubts the poet pouring books –
Why stay in, disavowed of rain?
Go, lose yourself in Sufi winds.
She finds you in the crowd of rain.
So silent is your gratitude.
O Misra, sing aloud of rain.
I found a poem lost in time
Inside another book of mine
I wrote but never read again
Because I lost my head again
Inside another valentine
I thought was then forever mine
I loved but never saw again
Because I found my claw again
Inside another text of mine
I wrote to her around the time
I turned into a beast again
Because I do, at least, again.
I heard it baying by the pool
And stoked the fire with a flute.
I blew some rising, smoking chords
So it could see, and smell, and hear
Foreboding in inferno come.
I heard it baying by the house
And stoked the fire with a bone.
I drummed some rising, smoking chords
So it could see, and smell, and hear
Cremation in inferno come.
I never heard it bay again.
I’m not the only one with tricks.
They fight with fists, with wrists, with heads,
With words they picked in sties and sheds,
With pails of milk, with bales of hay,
With nails that grow from day to day.
They fight in gangs, they fight by self.
No call for truce, no call for help.
They fight to play, they play to fight.
They fight with not a qualm in sight.
And then they hug – no smile, no talk.
They wipe their blood and sweat, and walk.
To cows, to sheds. To pigs, to sties.
And all is well till one more dies.
An eyelash, candles on a cake,
A dandelion, steaming steak –
I blew on all, I wished, I wished.
All evenfall, I wished, I wished.
Why tears blur my sight again,
If all will be alright again?
Alright is just a mothers’ myth.
All night, I wished, I wished, I wished.
The criss-cross of the Calendar
Is quite the net for catching days.
And yet somehow I’m always tricked
By Wily Watch’s rounded face,
Which promises to come again
In half the time the sunrise takes.
Wet sand. Dry sun. Polythene.
You. And Me. And Us between.
Paratha and a coffee cup.
And lastly, tender coconut.
Let sickness try to have our day.
It cannot take this hour away.
At eighty-six, he wants to fly.
The passport office clerk’s amused.
Is there someone he wants to meet?
No, just somewhere he wants to go.
Is there someone to go with him?
Yes, just the one who’s with him now.
They must be waiting outside, then.
Yeah. Waiting. Outside. Sounds correct.
It’s okay if he calls them in.
It’s okay. She’s a little shy.
His daughter? Or a niece, perhaps?
His daughter, yes. In-law, but yes.
Alright. His son won’t go with him?
No no. His son has gone ahead.
He said he has no one to meet?
No no. He has no one to meet.
It’s not her business anyway.
Yes, not her business, but okay.
The visa guys will ask him, though.
The visa guys will ask him, yes.
She’s done. She’s heading out for tea.
He’s grateful. Coffee’s more his thing.
The passport office guard salutes.
The clerk signals a smoke and winks.
The guard is ready with the match.
That old man wants a passport, ma’am?
He has a right. She hopes he’s right.
He’s not at all alright up there.
She coughs and waves and signals why.
He brought an urn with ashes, ma’am.
The man returns. He’s left his pen.
She eyes the urn in crimson cloth.
He says they keep refusing him.
He wants his foreign ticket too.
And now they’re left with no excuse.
It’s starting as a Horror tale:
A king is dead, his son is sad,
Until the king returns as ghost.
And now, it is a Mystery tale:
Who killed the king? Why kill the king?
And how can he be sure of it?
And now, it is Bildungsroman:
To be or not to be the man
The haunting king expects of him?
And now, it is Postmodernist:
A play about another play
That plays within the actual play.
And now, it is a Thriller tale:
A court intrigue, a power game,
A mousetrap of a kitten belled.
And now, it is an Action tale:
The foiling plots, the swording duels,
The army at the kingdom’s gates.
And now, it is a sad Romance:
To meet and part and meet again
So much in love, so much in death.
And now, they’re out of genre shelves:
He sells without the branding shells.
The Bard’s a genre in himself.
Our cleaner pointed at the stack
Of journals, notebooks on my chair
And said she found them on the floor
Collapsed, with pages here and there.
Again, I saw, she’d stacked them wrong –
The small, on top; the big, below –
Forgetting there’s a harmony
To how they stand and how they flow.
Precarious as Buddhist cairns,
These catchers of my mental fart
Accrue as vital vertebrae
That form the backbone of my art.
I smiled and thanked and shook my head,
Forgetting she could see the last.
She waited, saw my Jenga tower,
And smiled and tied her saree fast.
Minakhi Misra 