Blessing

When a leisurely search for a lost paper

Gets underway in the house

You can depend on me to find it

The books kept for display 

In the hall are where the hunt begins

And where it founders for they contain

Plenty of distractions between their leaves:

A post-dated cheque a borrower gave me 

With a request not to encash it till he cleared it

Still sits snugly in the pages of Hamlet;

What piques me again is

A newspaper cutting about a bestseller

That reveals the secret of talking about authors

You have not read or do not want to even under threat;

The best memento is a New Year greetings card

From years ago from a departed mentor

With a heartfelt blessing written in ink:

May you find what you are looking for.

Arrived

The mind has no longer any desire

To be anywhere else for it has seen

The futility of its frenetic travels

I'll not trade the quiet of the night

For even Bach on the cello

This coming home is a coming back

Not going back to a native land

Where the dreams swirl in the dust

And the temple answers no prayers

The room seems bigger than it is

The furniture don't seem in the way

Who smiles back in the almirah mirror

Is someone who has arrived, at last

Unbearable

The December night seeps into the concrete house

Through every pore and turns the walls,

Metal and wood and cloth icy to the touch

The blanket cannot keep out the weather

Still reeling in the bay storm's insane trail

When the ceiling fans are switched off 

A new silence full of unheard sounds prevails

The ear chooses to recall a familiar noise

To shut out the scrapes, scratches, voices

Too much quiet is not bearable even scary

Like when the mind goes blank for a while

And you want to call back a memory 

A song, a face, a number that reassures

You have not strayed into the dark unknown

Seen unseen

I wake up to the poet whispering

In my ear that all places are the same

Because they disappear all the same

No one is a stranger to sorrow and so

Kindred in suffering and transience

Look at the river that seeks the depths

Sings as it flows towards death

How can stepping into one wash sins away

The hill god enters the Vaigai, walks away

Every year in a reenactment of the myth,

That both segues and separates

Have you ever been inside such a crowd

Felt your face vanish into the many faces

Got swept away by the swell of oneness ----

The drumbeats still reverberate

In the heart like a visceral rhythm

When the haze lifts the seen is unseen.