Mitti

As a child
I ate mud.

It tasted of grit and peat
and wild churning

and something I could never find
a name for.

Later I became
a moongazer

always squinting through
windows,

believing freedom
was aerial

until I figured that the moon
was a likely mud-gazer

longing for the thick sludge
of gravity,

the promiscuous thrill
of touch,

the licence to make,  
break, remake,  

and so I uncovered
the old role of poets --

to be messengers
between moon and mud --

and began to learn the many
languages of earth

that have nothing to do with nations
and atlases  

and everything to do
with the ways

of earwigs,
the pilgrim trail of roots

and the great longing of life to hold
and be held,

and the irrepressible human love
of naming:

ooze, mire, manure, humus, dirt, silt
mould, loam, soil, slush, clay, shit,
mannu, matope, barro,
tin, ni, luto, fango …

All have their place, I found,
in the democracy of tongues,  

none superior,
none untranslatable,

all reminders
of the anthem

of muck
of which we are made,

except when June clouds capsize
over an Arabian Sea

and a sleeping city
awakens to an ache so singular

that for just a moment
it could have no name

other than that
where sound meets scent

and a slop of matter  
meets a slick lunatic wetness:

mitti.

Just that. Nothing else will do.