EIGHT POEMS FROM INDIA

1. DOOMED GARDEN

Innocenter poppy
hopelessly in love

briefly turns spectacular--
Light is different, though

Mayfly thinks he'll live forever--
O plaster Mother of God,

pity us! Secularer mantis,
negotiate a rose.


2. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT

(Pity in a grasshopper;
compassion in a frog;
mercy in a mockingbird;
agape in a shark?

No; not even saints perceive
justice in a cabbage)
Disinterested kindness;
You--in an ape like me?

3. VERY DISTANT COUSINS,

Maggots, on a windowsill
or in forgotten cheese,
I have come to join you now;

it has been my ambition
to metamorphosize
into something different;

why not to a fly?
Spider-and-a-human being
isn't better off:

caught in my own web
with too much venom
to accept my cross--

One day I'll have wings?
Larvae cannot writhe
in spoiled cheese forever--

I'll be a happy insect
innocently circling trash
much as I do now

but without shame and guilt.
Silly maggot, all is one,
recluse spider, fly.

4. YUM YUM

She moves her hand
from chest to mouth
repeatedly--

This means she wants tea.
Sometimes she does this
while saying, "Yum Yum"--

This means she's hungry.
Today we gave her
an opened box of

Suriya frosting,
nul puttu and clothes.
She might be 65, who knows?

50 plus or 70.
She is very bent and small;
I'm told she has

drunkards for sons, and
daughters beaten by
others' drunkard sons--

(My wife and I have visited
family in Chennai
twelve times since 1976--

They used to have a boy
about twelve years old
who lived with them;

Santishan washed and swept and cooked
and slept on the kitchen floor.
Later, he went mad.

Tamil sevants
have it somewhat better now--
That's progress, I suppose.)

Right now, Yum Yum's washing dishes;
After that, I watch her
disappear into a gaggle

of joggers in Reeboks.
A man talks with his broker
on a mobile--She slips;

her package falls in front of him.
He shouts and kicks it to the side,
as if she were a cow.


5. MY SOAP'S NAME IS VIDYA

My toothbrsh, Calhoun;
my mouthwash is
anonymous
during dry monsoons,
otherwise he's Roger.

What shall I be called?
Hieronymus the Poetaster,
the Master of Silence
from Beethoven Mu?
I call my self Treasure.

Please, says Hank Wall,
be quiet, be quiet,
be quiet, be quiet,
no one is no one
and no one is all.


6. GOA HAIKU

A woman of great beauty
passes by a fountain;
water flows.


7. THE SENSECENT GURU

I have had a hard life;
I wouldn't recommend it.
Yet, bent and frail at ninety-five,
I still don't want to end it.

Listen--if you're young and strong
and want to check out early:
compared to nothing, nothing's wrong
and even hell's gate's pearly.


8. I'M DONE

I'm shoveling anger,
a life-winter's snow.
Before all is ice,

frozen rage, Ego's
deep desires, go--
My path is clear. I'm done.