USA

A Thousand Years from Now

I know, on a summer morning,
amber ducklings will glowingly appear
out of brown eggshells. So, I smudge the dark pages
with an eraser and stain them with white ink
to edit out the sections of suffering.
I cross out the paragraphs of the impious
who put hateful words in God’s untainted mouth
in an attempt to keep the winged fairies away
from the School of the Blossoming Knowledge.

I make no mention of the mustachioed mouths
provoking lethal weapons
into the porcelain hands of the young.
The history I write has no reference to the occult
spewing of a mushroom cloud. I have no memory
of the heap of discarded shoes.

I rub out the penciled sketches of dusty caves
and purge obscene vocabularies such as
holocaust, mass grave, nuclear.
I watermark the pages with morning dew,
imprinting calmness on the lucent faces of virgin monks
who even now are singing
in the street of dwindling letters.

Wet Country

Fine, if you want to come,
you are welcome. But you should be aware
that there are no fixed train stops,
no ticket counters,
no stationmaster. Stop
wherever you wish to stop,
just make sure that in the spot where
you get down, the rain is grief-stricken
and the trees have no eyes.

There will be no one to receive you,
no assistance unloading
your water-heavy luggage.
But before you arrive, I’ll make sure
that a vapor cart waits for you by the cloud’s fortress.
You can easily find our drenched hill.
It always chimes like a wind bell.

I’ll capture the night’s storm
in a tin bucket for your shower.
Of-course there will be some warm food
on a soggy bay leaf set out
on a long dinner table at which
an entire empty city could eat.

The Urchin’s Return

From across the street, I study the iron gate,
then slip past the sleepy guard.
I run across the gravel path, then cross the yard’s ryegrass,
jumping over the ferns and bushes. Finally, I reach
the place where a granite panther gushes
a water cascade into a marble pool.

I freshen up in the fountain's cool mist,
wipe my face with the back of my hand,
tidy up my hair before mingling with the crowd.
In the palace’s shade, they are having an afternoon
of private family time.

The man in the straw hut is my dad. I know him
by the way he throws his horseshoes over the bonfire
and the woman wearing the cherry skirt
is my mother. I know her from the manner
in which she moves her hand fan.

Are the children sitting by the pool my siblings?
They must have born after I left. They appear so prim
in their dark suits, solemnly listening to the iron bird
singing in its wind-ringing voice.

From behind a pot of rare orchids,
I watch them, and suddenly feel very afraid.
If father discovers my visit to his house,
my loitering in his terrain in my dirty clothes, I know he will
call the guards at once to throw me back out to the street,
where, he says, I really belong.

© All Copyright, Sankar Roy.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.