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If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly I could see to write you a letter.
You are ice and fire, The touch of you burns my hands like snow. You are cold and flame. You are the crimson of amaryllis, The silver of moon-touched magnolias. When I am with you, My heart is a frozen pond Gleaming with agitated torches.
When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum. I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast, One after the other, Wedge you away from me, And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face. Why should I leave you, To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?
Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor
Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.
New Delhi, 1965
I took the train from Patiala,
left the girls with Ayah, and lied,
I'm with Faye and Daisy.
Had to say what he'd approve of.
Go then, Kiran said, crushing large rupees in my hand.
Have I been here a week?
I've slept so long I can't remember
who was with me last night in bed,
that figure leaning against the door?
Did he leave me this gold bangle?
I can feel its heft around my wrist,
knobs and crests, a design
from the high Mogul period of Aurangazeb.
I have come to Delhi
to remember our ancient past—so little, a bangle,
what else?
When it slid over my hand,
I opened myself like a book and you hear its private pulsing.
In the quiet he said, Put your hand here
to save your place.
I put my hand there, and he pressed it.
He sat with me a minute, and he went away,
left something to hinge me in the wind of myself,
to calm my legs.
Empire is large land and I can't touch it.
A smile is a root my mother said don't bother.
I am small. I married a dark talent
from a small world.
Until he asked me to drop my shawl
and slid his finger on my shoulder,
let me taste our leisure.
I read him. I peeled back lies.
I had harped on grandeur,
but the Taj Mahal and Rome are a fantasy.
What's left is my darkness. He spoke to me
of skin and I touched it.
Until he asked me to drop my shawl
and slid his finger on my shoulder,
let me taste our leisure.
It required my defiance of the small world.
He asked would you, and I said I would.
I read him. I drank up my history and peeled back the glossy lies.
I had harped on former grandeur,
but the Taj Mahal and Rome are a fantasy.
What's left is my darkness. He spoke to me simply of skin and I touched it.
For so many years I kept my mantra:
they are great and I am small.
I've slept. I've tasted my own milk.
I'll raise my girls, then I'll be back to taste the morning.