In the Grammar of Flown Sparrows
There is a place where the world ends.
This place is dance. I saw a woman
on the beach once, somewhere in the
hot tropics of Southern India. Her arms
and legs were confessions, her body
a vessel for the jewelled confessional.
She swayed in the language of forgotten
sparrows. An ancient swoon.
The answer, demystified. I knew then
that that was the mark—the long
searched-for ‘x’ coveted by science
and philosophy. And I let my body
drop, then rise. In the brief hour
past dawn, the uncurling of burgundy.
And a big, breathless swallow
of what it felt like—the world gushing
into oblivion, with forgotten sparrows
giddily chirping.
A Diagram for Life
In this life of war,
my call to arms is,
in fact, a call to flowers—
the uncontrollable
blasphemy of gulmohar;
the sheer giddy seasonal
blush of magnolia;
the shy, fallen sadness
of jacaranda; fled,
these lyrical embers of
dandelion; underfoot,
the crunch of marigold—
each of these breathing
love, a sense of there
being something else,
into the lives of cities
and their susceptible
human beings, with this
one tender mandate
of unrequited pleasure—
kill, kill, kill.
Remembering a Lover in November
I walk into cathedrals, into streets,
carrying an absentminded breeze
in my torn trouser pocket.
When did the past get to feel
this old. I hear it on the radio—
dead actors mouthing a lost language.
Beneath a slow moon above
the Mapusa, fish would barter their
pounds of flesh for a line of poetry.
Everything’s changed since,
here in this city of passerby
flamingoes and edgy ott endings.
I smell you in November’s sad
flowers—the way these petals
long for long-gone rain.
I am the fabled sultanate.
A vast empire of illicit euphoria
and countries that know no regret.
I leave my apartment for
the brio of the streets. November
smells the way the past smells
—just dead flowers
mouthing a lost language.
The Urban Poet Dreams of Far-off Places
My skin full of stories, incomplete endings.
In the fiasco of this northerly summer,
I squander the past like a game of chance.
The earth is ripe and cruel, but also,
forgiving. The days have an edge—
a circadian mess of tomorrows and never—
knows. In the meadows of my Himachali
reverie, mulberries are maturing in dark
crimson exuberance, weeping willows
are whispering about the rapidity of each
season. I light a fire in the city. Kindle
my dormant profusions. Think of all
the stories that shape the human chronicle.
The flame leaps. Such furious forgiveness.
Ephemeral Something or the Other
Morning serrates a recurring dream.
This early, its aura tiptoes through
the spaces left wanting for touch,
breathing life into their lungs, and,
dare, I say it, beauty. I am a dress
rehearsal for love. My heart pounds
to the meter of bleeding jacaranda,
arms ache over the holding,
pupils wide in their expectation
of a blossoming. The truth is, blue
is the colour of any morning. Lips
rouse in the vagary of their euphoria.
A vase with old flowers reaches
for the open city. An open book
reaches for the oldness in nostalgia.
You must know this poem isn’t about you.
These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these poems should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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