Falling, slipping, vanishing...

Rain.
Rupashi Bangla on my table.
An ephemeral instant passes by, when I am.
In the sound of the raindrops, in the scent of the manuscript, I can be.

Then, unable to hold on, I begin to quiver.
Relentlessly.
And I think, I become, I look, hear and am predicated.
By the time I write, it is lost.

This shadow of a brief nothing is all that stays.

For HPL

It howls
behind the wolfen shore,
veiling the round moon.
It shrieks
through the needle-sharp leaves
of the conifers
in the clouds.

It burns
in the ancient tentacles
seeking saline shelter
from undersea storms.

And it reeks,
the stench of repressed rot,
distended veins,
nauseous souls.

It shines,
The explosive engine
of all creation.
Burning, blinding, yellow beauty,
scorching my dusty eyes
which wither and bleed
but shed not a tear.

Et in Arcadia, Ego

The moon

 written in paper veins

Whistling grass

Your skin

Cool

Now warm

Brine

Tanned, stretched

Twisted onto bone

Bound

Now flapping free

Your being enveloped

And voided

Nothingness

Rooted

In your stalks.

Smoothness crumples

No one sees

redness

Pulsing

Directionless

Searching for the Nebula

Which, once blue

Told us of entropy

Of cold distance

Disparate

Disappearing

Darkness

Matters.

From the tram-tracks

A thousand nights

Unslept

Unfeeling the weight
of a thousand years

that lay on Her lover.

A crane flies along the skyline

Where steeltowers meander

Where Orion hunts no more.

The lepers are gone

From the hydrants.

The forlorn Doel whistles in vain

at constellations smothered by smog,

at banished Shamas

at screeching Starlings.

Can I be the sand

on his tired feet

Or

Seathing saline hands

scraping his being?

My beloved’s face

was carved in lines

not of Sravasti.

The engine roars,

vibrating wings

a memory.

We totter along

through owling woods

strewing entrails

along the asphalt.

Halfway (to Namkhana)

Sun-skinned,

She turns to me

Smiles:

“My name is Arunima Sanyal

Were you looking for me?”

Les somnambules

Devenir poète,
C'est, devenir un fragment poétique
Qui se forme de feu
Se tue
S'efface

Une mèche de fumée
Montante
Parmi les nuages
vue par les cils
du moitié endormi...

*******************************

The Sleepwalker

Becoming a poet
Is to become a poetic fragment
Which forms itself from fire
Kills itself
Self-erases

A strand of smoke
Climbing
Among the clouds
seen through the eyelashes
of the half-asleep.

Wedding season

Bougainvilleas blossom
on wintersunned carpet,
Grass
Growing into
The edges
of awakening.

Her man reads, writes
of the undead, unsickening
As the morning she-naigh
Breaks the cold nightly dawn.

Maidan

A brown colt
Voyages out
With a roan mare
and the blueyellow sun
on the fields,
green
seen from a fallen tree.
A banyan tree
it was.
Saw an ancient city born
and the hopes of a young lover
die.