When the evening star appears

and the oil-lamp is fed with ghee

my grandmother offers silver plates of betel leaves

and arecanut

to the white-tusked God

wrapt in hypnotic spirals of rose incense

chanting esotericism

from a cloth-bound Bhagavad-Gita

I can hear her thick golden bangles

jingling to the rhythm of mantras

He dances in a cosmic-ring of flame

the orbs of infinity

beside a petalled copper tray

bronze tier-lamp

and brocaded green-gold silk

The last mooing of cows lingers

as does the sunset’s red tinge

in a land tiptoed by gods and goddesses

a rippling dark humid soil

of remorse

nostalgia and dreams

of trees spreading knotted branches

and rain forests which nestle emerald whip snakes

in large palmyra vessels

the serpents of eternity 

Now begins dawn

smeared with saffron and camphor

sacred ash and vermilion

offering petals of full-blown roses

as you glide

in an open-skied dream

over the red-earthed slopes of Thirupathi

where storks fly high

and black peacocks live

Home to the patron of the mountain lands

the Three-Pronged One with lotus-red feet

and scarlet-leafed gleaming spear

the righteous arrow of warfare 

In dark maritime lands

a lonely sunset is eclipsed by rain

all night crammed into it

She waits for you

in the scant chequered shadow

of the sable-boughed margosa grove

hears the rumble of ebony tropical inlets

distant drums of vast clouds

sights the luminous eyes of an anguished gazelle

the lithe frame of an incandescent tiger

She is still dazed by the dream

an Arabian jasmine crushed by hungry bees

forsaking the honeyed darkness of sleep

The large-flowered jasmine blooms

in the gathering dusk

The white cotton wick in the oil-lamp

flames scarlet

In the flushed skies

a broken bangle of conch-shells like the crescent moon

floats

A black cuckoo pecks

at the fragrant pollen of the mango branch –

a whetstone covered with silver dust

This forest

its clusters of golden blossoms

of the dark-branched mast-wood trees

moist cool shady as darkness itself

Beside it ivory sands

as dazzling as many moons heaped together

White flowers of the sea-pine washed by the waves 

Lavanya Rama drifts from a wizened transistor

the all too familiar Thyagaraja crooning of

Kama-sutra maidens with flower-like eyes

and golden complexions

thick dark hair fragrant with home-grown jasmine

their ornamented shoulders ablaze

Aryan dancers

with beautiful narrow white foreheads

keep rhythm

to the orgasmic frenzy of courtship

clinking rows of white bangles and silver bracelets

soaring in ivory chariots glistening with gold plating

Their clandestine world seasoned

with asafetida-spiced-curries

and frankincense

replete with the laden syllables

of a guttural mother tongue

and the puissant gestures

of convoluted stringy alphabets

rising from red-lipped mouths into moist smokeless air

But now

you grieve for a forsaken heritage

Dravidian

of the mind’s far country 

fishermen’s kayaks

flounder in hot mid-storm

russet embryos of boats

crazed monsoons of June

charge out of bleached blue air

and the tempest of crosswinds quakes

like inauspicious and epidemic orgasms

the lighthouse stands in this thunderbolt

of billows on cliffs

shipwreck of unrehearsed dementia

in the wild of unquiet darkness

Boldly you faced the world that morning of a bright blue sky,

heard music in the sunrise, saw something in the tree-tops

straining to touch the skies under a dusty russet earth

of leaves-lay-scattered like dried tobacco leaves.

A certain heartache was about, and witching-time's chill

ate into your ethereal flesh. Certain black clouds were watching you,

to pour their wrath on your head. Then, your ageless mirage

dissolved in the neoplastic anguish of a languishing summer,

gasping with accursed heart of poison-pain.

But, when the colour deepens fast from day to day,

when trees turn gold, leaves and stems and all,

I know you will be there rustling in the breeze,

in the flutter of the pale golden grains of harvest,

timeless. 

Staggering into dreams and dreams become nightmares

in a mesh of dark and light, like a smothering shroud.

the soporific afternoon, whitewashed, pounds,

the hammerhead of death.

I see blood on the glory-lily, red clumps from the flame tree

stumbling on to stripped earth,

and mercury-coated toadstools bared to the sky.

The day is a sore open to scouring, my peeling skin a pink nudity.

Sometimes, when I look too closely,

I descry bare being in your glacial eyes.

I am but a quarry for your words, a darkness

that dissolves in a timeless zone of primitive nothingness.

A sarcoma of the mind.  

A sunflower, you burst open onto earth with the golden hues

of an eternal summer, sprinkling diamond-sized seeds of mirth

on hot, bare soil sprouting weed-grass.

I see pearled raindrops flowing unbridled from your eyelids,

salty, like tears, and sunbeams become you, on the sand

on which you lie, garlanded, your face marble-textured,

serene in moksha repose. This was your liberating fate.

You made the earth quake with rain of blood

in the sudden aftermath. When you left my heart died with you

flower of the Portuguese soil, amber blossom of dreamclouds,

soaring over the green-ochre Algarve shrublands,

seeking the Monchique's cool and the shade of the sturdy olive tree;

the blue Atlantic perennial in the distance.

I watch you traversing space, from the hot, dusty, gravel road

fenced by the Quinta de la Cruz, to quaint Portimao

and the miles beyond. I read you in hibiscus and roses pink, red

and white; mauve bougainvillea and purple morning-glory.

You are contained in the lemon tree and the magnolia,

and fir-trees with their roots in the sky. I hear your voice

in the husky timbre of warm wind over rugged plains.

Your silhouette, slight, slides under oak doors,

through keyholes and French windows, pleading once more

to be centre of merry-making, perfumed in spirits,

in your white Mediterranean villa.

Now, in dusk's still half-light, a wistful zephyr scatters torn petals

on the dust. Your aquamarine shawl drapes over my dreams

like the peacock's glory. Your bracelet of pearls slumbers

in its bed of silk, and filigreed platinum ring rests, sedately,

on a finger. Like the corona at the sun's circumference

you will continue to sear hearts, diffusing celestial heat. 

Do not touch this core of glass

that I will not trust onto you

from this timorous twilight dwelling.

Do not look into these eyes for answers

as you tear your hair, unsanctified,

but gaze at those desolate hills

that dissolve into mystery

like dark Russian melodies

that flow into another speech,

another time, another place.

For I am the calm, the starfish

who hears only the music of

distant drums and songs and nightbirds.

I will not speak.

 the ardvark gorges termites

off a boabab

its small eyes

luminous points of a dead African night

the lissome magnetism

of an old-age flute

swaying under a cobalt moon

the martyr’s hinterland

ebony

still blisters by blood that boils

under monochrome graves of cold granite

etched cacography