Trumpeting spring

The pink trumpet trees on either side

Of the road mitigate your winter

Of bare head and conscious breath 

The eyes mist over at the rare blossoms

Heralding spring in soft tones over

The discordant notes of the traffic

The eyes that have seen will carry

The flowers home and place them

In vases adorned by artificial flowers

Neither fragrant nor wilting

But offering some quiet to the city-stressed

The neighbourhood konrai is in bloom too

Blazing with its yellow fire next to

The palash yet to light its orange flames

The grandfather points out the new season

To the little one tracking the fleet-footed cat

Time seems to be in no hurry, to light your fire.

Touching rain

The morning grows dark like evening

The clouds gathering from nowhere

Crowd out daylight just like that

It seems you had almost forgotten 

What rain looked like or smelt like 

Or felt like the way

You gazed at it like someone from land

Where it is a rarity and treated like divinity

You had forgotten what it is to feel holy

What sacred looks like and only revering 

Lifeless idols made holy by touchy priests

Who pretend to be holier than your god

To watch and stretch your hand out for

A cup of cloud, sky, sea and wind is

To partake of a time you can't keep.

April

It's April and the bodhi tree

Is in leaf, the old quietly leaving

For the new to arrive, with many

Branches still looking bare and even

The regular crows roosting there 

Keeping away in the mid-day sun;

You keep checking every day to see

The green leaves peeping out 

And growing larger and greener 

With the sheen more brilliant by the hour

The boys flying kites sometimes find 

Their first few flights of the season

Crashing here irretrievably as lost time ---

The drama of death and resurrection 

Enacted every year before your eyes

Is strangely reassuring as your steps falter

And you foresee your own time stopping.

Star

The star is just a blink away

So is the bud from the flower

Between the flower and star

The distance is not too far

The rainbow stays longer

For the sake of the child

Who takes it to her heart

And keeps it there when it is not

The leaf turns sunlight green

Leaves the other colours 

To reach for the flower

Between the flower and star

The distance is not too far

Between me and my goddess

The distance is not any less.

Moonlight

The moonlight stops short

Of the balcony window,

At a particular time in the night

The tiled floor catches the moon's

Reflection and robs the eyes of sleep,

Other nights in another city come back

To remind you of when you lay awake

Listening to the sleepless dogs wagging

Their tongues and dreaming of tomorrow

You imagine walking the moon across

Familiar roads back to the river bridge

From where you see the temple towers

Raise folded hands towards the sky with clouds

Ready to bear any tidings to any place

If you are awake and looking at this moon

Pray that this serenity return to skies

Everywhere and children sleep peacefully

And go to school and come home safe.

Shrouds

Those little girls did not go home

That day from school and learnt a truth

They could not tell anyone they knew

Think of the mothers who cannot fill

The screaming absences left behind

Heard above the wail of air-raid sirens

At night they wake from fitful sleep

Thinking they heard those little steps

Patter again like rain around the house

The full moon often wears her round face

That when it wanes there is a dying again --

Tyrants who weep that girls are in chador

Hardly wince when sending them shrouds.

Vow of silence

The seer wrote:

I am on a vow of silence

For fear of telling the truth

To a world not ready for it

To tell the truth and see it distorted

Like Chinese whispers till the words

Lose all meaning and sound

Commonplace

Or ridiculed for being a charlatan

Claiming to see behind the veil 

When the seen is all that is to be seen

And death is not a beginning but an end

Or worse to be turned into god and worshipped, the message all forgotten.