‘May hungry men learn to listen to hunger’: These new poems urge a deeper look into our beliefs
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Hymn for Awakening
My mind is a bird
with a forked tail
fighting foes
greater than me.
I rise at dawn
and twirl and fight,
stir the overrun milk
of the day and cry in alarm.
My voice, it dons
many a cloak,
all but my own.
Pierce me, my love
with your sunbeam’s spear.
Plunder my vain clinking trinkets.
Return to me, my love,
my very own silence
and let me gaze unblinking
at your blinding glory.
Hymn for Hunting
Unwavering, my heart,
like a shikra circling distant skies
with fiery eye fixed on obscure prey
pursues you,
only you, my love.
Your waist, my love,
like a serpent that in itself
brews venom from birth and
spends it all in a single strike,
brews eternal nectar for my moment’s yen.
Like spears that fly
drawn to their foes,
like milk that flows
drawn to calves,
like seas in tumult
drawn to clouds,
my deeds, your dreams
entwined are drawn,
to death, to desire,
to us,
my love.
The Churning of a Moment’s Pleasure
Come.
Sit in my lap.
Now are our bodies one mythic mountain.
Hold.
Clasp my arms.
Now are our limbs, one cosmic serpent.
Sink.
Then rise afloat.
Now am I the turtle holding your world.
Churn. Churn. Churn.
Your gods. My demons.
My gods. Your demons.
First comes venom.
Swallow.
Hold it in our throats.
Now are we hung between life and death.
Next come treasures.
Split.
You take wealth. I take boons.
Now are we insolvent debtors forever.
At last from the shimmering ocean,
when demons become gods,
when gods become immortal, and
god becomes a seductress,
comes
nectar, nectar, nectar.
Spill.
Let life overflow and lavish.
Now have we wasted an eternity for
a moment’s pleasure.
Gossiping with a god
This afternoon,
cloistered by the bleak monsoon clouds
I invite the dancing Siva to gossip.
At my call,
he relaxes, his rigidly fluid pose,
lets the river of his hair ramble,
casts off his cool crescent moon,
lays aside his fire of wisdom,
frees the demon of ignorance,
and sits ungainly on my couch.
As his bull chews the cud,
we tattle of nagging...