Half Digital
Half the body,flesh and bone.Half, digital.
Half the mind,made of muscle and nerve.Half, digital.
Half of touch,skin against skin.Half, digital.
Half of relation,body to body.Half, digital.
Half a life livedthrough the five senses.Half, digital.
Half the worldseen face to face.Half, digital.
In this half-lived life,only half a languagewas my lot.
Half a sheet of paper,half a pen,half the ink.
A half-written poem,this one,you are reading.
With your half-natural,half-digital eyes.
Stone
Worn downby gusts of wind,by the flow of water,by the heavy footfall of time,these stones,How much traffic of timehas moved across them.
I have taken up the workof breaking stone,chiselling itfor a new building.These stones,flung outfrom the womb of the earth.
I have grown attached to them.I run my hand over their backs,They gossip with me.
I beat them loose,spin them into thread on a spindle;sometimes I squeeze them,and with their essencestitch together torn skin.
So many large stones lie here,broken, abandoned,silent, solitary,no one puts them to use.
In the darkness within stone,how many forms,arms locked with one another,ribs caught, voices congealed.
They wait for no onein that dense unawareness.Once chiselled,they will stretch, awaken.I lie upon them,watching the cube-shaped clouds of the sky.
Breaking stone, this is my work.With chisel and hammer,with my whole body,I break stone.With fierce concentration,I break stone.
Not just my bones, my sinews,even my eyeshave turned to stone.
Touch them with your fingers,you will feel it:in this poem tooI have set stones onlyin place of words.
The Search
What a crowd has assembled,who lost what,who seeks what,no one seems to know.Only the search goes on.
Someone is looking for glasses,someone for a lost wallet,someone for a home left far behind,a village, a lineage, an origin.
Someone searches for inheritance,for a mirror, a caste, a gender,colours blown away,customs rusted through,extinguished tales of forgotten ancestors.
Look at him, searching within.And that one, wandering outside, for so long.Mischievous ghosts of memorylend a hand to everyonein this search.
This one bumps into that one,that one shoves another,more things keep getting lost.What was lost firstcannot be found at any cost.
What is found belongs to someone else.What turns up in your handis not yours.
To find what one has truly lost,that has become nearly impossible.
A whirlwind has broken loose,some things ground into dust,some, light as cotton,still drifting in the air.
Never have we been so helpless, my friend.Things glued to us for years, for centuries,suddenly, they slipped away.Everyone searches with all their might, bewildered.
But there is no remedy now.What you have lostwill not return.Even if you stake your life, no use.
So do one thing:gather all these lost things,pile them together,and set them on fire.
All of it,useless, after all.You will not accept this,not yet.
Season
The whole earth,absorbed in its Sufi whirl, moves in silence,the waterwheel of seasons turning without end.But in this city that has lost its way,which season remains?
Spring is never seen here, breathing its fragrance.Summer does not crackle with light.Autumn and early winter,lost somewhere in childhood,lost at a fair.
It is winter now.Only the trees seem to murmur,as yellow leaves keep falling.
Rain vomits downand then stops abruptly.And with a false, knowing laugh, a voice declares:“I have arrived - monsoon.”
The same voice, a little ahead,twisting the hand, pulling it behind the back,makes you look,at the streets split open,the city’s belly brimming with venom.
Have you seen your city’s true face,once the colour is washed away?Look,this is what your city is.
When the salt-heavy windrises from the blue seaand begins to suffocate,it seeps into every building.
It cherishes everything within,for years and years,and slowly,it erodes human beings too.
This city of the sons of the soil,now expelled,watching from a distancewith hungry, aching eyes.
This city of outsiders,uprooted from their own ground,settling here,what festivals keep it alive?
Which painter will step forwardto fill this city with colour,so that, all at once,it might flash into brightness?
What labyrinthhas drawn methis far?
Dense as a beehive,this city hums blazing beside my bed,in what smell of dreamsdo I fall into deep sleep?
