The Wind Song (draft)

There's a song in the wind
There are words.

The south wind roars
deep, aloud
swirls
in giant waves
over her hut where the river ends.
Tonight she will soak her hair in the wind
and sleep beneath the stars.

And in a damp little room
In a damp little city
Alone
A wordless poet struggles for breath
Where the wind doesn't reach
Lungs and craving arteries
Empty, blank.

Tell me who unleashed the city
over this landscape
Stretched it like an unrolling carpet
rugged with time,
rugged
so,
if you reach beneath the surface
you will
feel the grass and the mud and the soul.
Tell me who it is the city awaits.

And tell me who entrapped the poet
in this body
diseased,
dying,
devoid of blood
And tell me who confined the poet
in this mind
lost for words, lost for
thought, lost
for belief.
Tell me
who cursed the poet
to untimely death.

"Beloved, there is no god
within these walls
No sight, no solace, no
respite. - I cannot dream..."
I cannot sleep
these days,
no more, I wait
for the seagull's scream
above my head, I
wait
for the gales to blow
away the floor,
The dust will sparkle.

But was she the nymph
of the south winds, some aeons ago,
do you know when she forgot her name?
Do you know if the city smog
chokes her, if the chains still
bruise her ankles, or where
does the yellow cab take
her every night?

The computer has fallen silent, the cell-
phone the footsteps and
so will the clock and
the heartbeat
soon - Talk to me!
I yearn for voice talk to me
Talk to me about anything
everything the grass the
soul the cliff the hut your father
who left for the wind
and never returned...
how she lured him to sea.

And why
does the yellow cab take her
every night
to the abandoned graveyard
whose ancient bones
does she try to sooth
with her gentle fingers
of breeze?

This city was not built
for the winds.
I wonder
how they forgot
that the river
leads to the sea, and
the sea to the winds.
And one day
the winds will steal
the men the songs the souls

And when I die, sit
by my grave for a while
and plant me a krishnachura.
Plant it such that every breeze
will shower
petals like sunset
petals like blood
I shall be
red.

I shall be red.

Extract

I would like you to die this
moment, before the glares and sneers
and prejudices can find you and
drag you out to the dawn, seething;
before their greedy fangs dig blood
on the flesh of your back; I would like you
to die and become a sacred memory,
a phantom fragrance, a summer night
dream I can hide in the darkest
spires of my eyes... I would
like you to die in my arms - still
warm, unscathed, pure.

...

Asking you out on a winter night

Tell me, if I asked for
a part of you tonight, would you
let me take a sip of that thunderstorm
raging through the shores of your heart?
Tell me – I ask you
for your city of dust and ashes, those
congested streets that you love, the ideals
of your forefathers; your dream, dark and looming,
transcending bodies and time... your dream,
dark and looming, that lends you blood
and wings.

I ask you for the hunger of your people, rising,
like a ghost in the colour of your eyes;
for your chaotic memories, crowded
with scruffy old men, shrivelled women, children
with begging bowls, lives lived
and died on footpaths, closed-down factories whose
rotting gates reek of blood. I ask
for your path of fire – pre-destined – scrawled
over a piece of paper.

And I ask for your whirlwind evenings, the usual games,
cigarette-end conversations with ladies
with strange surnames; your nights
of careless passion; and the
emptiness singeing your soul, as you walk
out of yet another lover's door on a stagnant dawn.

And at a rhythmless moment - you look
behind, your head tilted like half-sculpted
marble (the rest of you still
undone), your hair thick sheets of rain
over your shoulders, and your reflection
filling you with the bitterness
of a disenchanted traveller, who realizes
that the horizon has eluded him
again. And at
a rhythmless moment, when you think
your soul defeated and lost – I ask for those thoughts.

Tell me, if I asked for a part of
you tonight, would you let me hold
your hands, moulded from centuries of soil
and song? Would you place them – expressive and
warm – on my hips; would they
melt, with a drowning
madness, within my flesh and self?
Tell me, if I asked for a part of you tonight,
would you let me
Become
a part of you?