WATERHOLE
 

Something in the blood wants to leap,

Here, outside the ICU my father’s in,

His speech now taken from him,
 

By bandages, tubes and pipes.

What wants to leap is like the sound and stroke

Of a bright steel plectrum against a taut tuned string,
 

The hollow russet gourd with its bridge of horn,

Leaf-decked and lacquered in Calcutta in his early teens,

Reverberating with the tiles of a mosaic floor,
 

Laid down at his grandfather’s behest to allure the dead –

An untameable sound, febrile, metallic,

That reaches out not for perfection of pitch or form,
 

But for the undergrowth of forests visited in solitude,

Between sessions at court or five-star hotels.

It is a music that summons the jungle home,
 

Beseeching it to inhabit the domain of time-hallowed meters,

And arched, ancestral walls, once believed indomitable;

Each creepered phrase, each verdurous pause,
 

Urging it to confer, on territories of tone

That have stood like temples,  

Its uncontrollable strength.
 

What longs to leap is impassioned

As the sound of strings he tuned and strummed,

Pulled, plucked and put aside for years;
 

But also, it is as tuneless, aloof and swift,

As the single click of a black-and-white camera,

Heard, against the torrid crunch
 

Of desiccated leaf-beds crumpled by hooves,

Amidst crane-squawk, deer-bark, cricket-hum and monkey-screech,

In the parched interior of a landlocked forest
 

Towards the end of March,

When trees turn skeletal, and all streams for miles around

Run dry, all pools but this one –
 

His breath slowing down,

As he turns from the lens to the thought of thirst,

And rows of antlers sail cautiously into view,
 

Till it is time to gather with those who have gathered,  

Receiving what deer and buffalo receive,

Asking to live, here only for water.
 

NOCTURNE COMPOSED IN A SWIMMING POOL
 

Afloat on my back on a moonless night,

I marvel at how – against the heft and pull

Of all that holds it down and wants it to sink –

The flesh buoys up and grows curiously light.

You who bestow on the sinews such ease

As the heart unblessed may not rise to know –

Water, seeping in silence through my pores,

Tinged with lamplight and cerulean blue,

You do not suffer the estrangement of those

Who sink interred within, yet strive against

The shroud-like outer boundaries of the skin.

Reaching for what’s right here, my arms outstretched,

I float at odds with all I am immersed in.

My suffering ends where these blues begin. 
 

THREESOME
 

So now you call long-distance to remind me

My late friend is not just mine to mourn,

But also yours –

Though things turned sour between you,

And the two of you haven’t spoken in twenty years. 

I understand: you wish to reclaim a lost right to grief,

And to tell me – though, of course, you do not mention this –

That in the great list of things we have shared, you and I –

Tarkovsky, Tolkien, riverfish in mustard sauce,

Boat rides, skinny-dipping, rain,

The same therapist, the same cheap rooms in gimcrack hotels –

We must not now forget to include

A dead man’s insatiable, irretrievable member.

You will want to fondle them, perhaps, 

When you read this, alone in your room 

On your laptop screen with the lights switched off,

The breasts I could never quite bring myself to share –

Though I tried, believe me –

With the recently dead.
 

THAT’S HOW IT FEELS
 

You claimed you preferred the safety of public spaces;

To appear at bookstores, a park, a hotel pool.

I had grown attuned to your frequent assaults on sleep;  

Till late last night you chose to blast the rule,
 

And accost me in a room where only you could see me.

Your eyes held mine with a stare hell-bent on slaughter.

I recall a feverish ripping of shirts, the pressure

Of nails on astonished skin, but little thereafter,
 

Except the sound of the flesh crying out for more.

When you bit my lips I’m certain they bled.

You loosened your grip, then rose and reached for the door. 
 

A salt-lamp quivered in the dark. There, you said,

I told you one day you’ld get what you’ve always longed for:

That’s how it feels to get fucked awake by the dead.
 

FIGURE LOOKING OUT OF CAVE AT RAIN*
 

Sharp torrents of rain, brief splashes of light 

Lash against the edge of a gaping crack:

Seen from behind against a blaze of white,   

A single faceless figure wrapped in black.
 

Sometimes I see a woman standing there,

At home in what descends to greet the eye;

Sometimes a man, who looks up from despair,

Yet lives in fear of rain and light and sky.

Here in the dark he cannot step out of,

The hardness of rock below and above

Reverberates with wrongs he never forgave.

A realm of white light reserved for the brave,

Sprawls beyond the open mouth of his cave,

Where water pours down a rock face like love.

*Based on a photograph by Madhu Kapparath