The eager lake-wind studded with bits of ice

and blood-chill.

Blowing like starvation with sharp teeth

and knives scanning for prey.

A city sleeps with men and women in its belly

filled with darkness.

The wind howls like an extinct animal

coming back to life, scratching windows and skin.

It brings back history from bones and flesh,

from lies and lore,

from tears and songs of mothers; more mothers

and fathers are dead.

What never died can come alive anytime

peeling away frail undercurrents.

Downtown sidewalk swings between light and shade

in rhythm of his unsuspecting steps.

The black man whistles into the night

casting a disproportionate shadow,

heavy and heaving

and cuts open centuries of fear in waylay.

 

Let the sunset come pouring all over us

a stillness we feel as eternity

in our teeming hearts — pulling in distant shores

vibrant with joys and melancholy

and timeless horizons born in throbbing arteries

of faraway galaxies. Let them come—

let them wrap us into one.

The birds fall asleep, and within their sleep

we are awake with memories of a life enacted

and warmth of glowing embers.

We walk alongside with remorse of a rift —

for this is earth and we are flesh.

Our intertwined fingers are longing

that live on forever after us.

When it dawns, where we stood

is new space filled with new light.

Where did we go?Along which path?

Through the night, in our silence,

with our stillness — where did we go?

How do we know ourselves, and if we are separate now?

 

I am not the keeper of my memories —

a stunning relief, 

though not aimed at my delight or liberation,

for it arrives in sudden haste and without proem

on passage of what has been

unceremonious existence of human,

like soap bubbles in collective fate 

subsiding on a rock-flat, 

into colourless circles, 

and what is left of me 

are peripheries turning coarse and dry,

exiting and weightless.

An old-fashioned paper-weight, 

forever maimed

by air bubbles trapped within,

reflects with inexhaustible patience 

streaming light —

invading its burden 

of memories and distorted dimensions 

since point of origin. 

A sliver of night waits at the threshold,

a chink separates two panels of a door.

Heavy wood in slumber, loosely held 

by hinges of mammoth iron

hammered into duty centuries ago. 

Forgetfulof all who visited, and all who left

this cubic vessel — a courtyard 

filled with silence of chiffon, 

falling like a waterfall and flowing 

through the absence of our bodies.

A line of hazy light—milky and suffused with moon,

is suspended at a distance

like a linear marker of where we leave. 

Sympathy in your eyes light as feather, 

and its sweet smell as your eyes become flowers.

Utterly helpless in face of night —

the density of all distances and all dimensions 

telescoped into a moment 

when we want to love 

one last time.

Before we start turning cold at the edges

and our bodiestravel toward stillness —

we throw a stone at a glass figurine

or at a mirror of human length —

and then, we turn around and break down into tears.

 

I forget to look around 

and pick up fractions,

sweetened by blood and torment,

and lay claim to myself —

           if there is such a thing,

and the pieces of no name

in a complex sing to me

like the rising tide of moon light

flooding a premature heart —

               if there is such a thing.

Searching is like walking through 

the thinnest aluminium film

on skin of glass, 

and praying for accompaniment of light —

                  if there is such a thing,

lightness to sail past,

shedding asymmetry and its many shades,

carrying distortions alive in tiny beats 

of joy leaping into prayers —

         if there is such a thing.

 

On a wooden pedestal a mannequin —

patiently bursting in neon and playing the queen

with angular hips and drawn-out chin

holding crisp at ninety degrees

for audience long retired to sleep

while the city rubs its winter 

against her glass skin,

and fresh snow catches a blaze 

in a rectangular grave

sliced out of the sidewalk at her feet.

Rest abruptly dark outside the frame. 

Nails painted red, no eyes, no lips 

form a lovely face — in determined direction 

cuts through the night, its freezing drift

and chunks of poison meat,

like a one-dimensional knife.

From the blurbs:  In The Boatman of Murshidabad, Madhu Kailas presents the poet’s engagement with art and creative liberation through startling imagery and innovative verse. In the title poem, ‘The Boatman of Murshidabad’, the eponymous boatman becomes a metaphor for torpor, loneliness, and the remorseless passing of time; in ‘The Day a Song Dared to Soar’, travellers return and pick new faces for rebirth; in ‘Keys Made of Sunshine’, a child grows up and learns to listen to silence; in ‘Silence of Butterflies’, golden silk strands cascade on to the green forest floor; and in ‘The Forest Sings’, the breeze preserves an arrangement of leaves and flowers in a secret language. Deeply felt and packed with insights into the human condition, The Boatman of Murshidabad is a dazzling collection of poems by an accomplished poet. Buy your copy here.