12.11 am. Let it begin. Raincoats soaked,
teapots cloaked
by thick steam, the murmurs of shadows
passing in and out of their faces

Books browse the breeze, their flaps open
pages stroked and shivered
unwritten bits whispered as wants
sitting on moist ears

Like a workshop, the bed, busy and frantic
rises and falls like an ocean, whose waves
travel towards the silent coasts of windows
faraway and sleeping

Montage 2

The air gathers the passing
From where I left the bus behind, it’s red body flashed
By torn adverts tearing into the city
Chapped and aged

The cafe opens – a cup
filled like a proud schoolboy
Carries freshness, the round tip
Meeting and vanishing all together
…a photographer walks by

His love hanging around his neck,
The pictures uncaged freely circle him, continue

To mesmerise the old chap with a splattered sole
Scratching the floor, rowing along
Carrying the falling leaves with him
Into an apartment with a locked cupboard,
Two teacups, a bus ticket
And a box of negatives
Kept for later, the very end


There is the creaking ceiling fan, there is
The line of crumbs along the table’s edge, your face
Tucked into the blanket as a mask
Hidden from a soft blue window

Quoting an untranslated author, dreaming
Of her verse in the dim silence of your sleep, you
Breakaway and enter the world again, reborn
From a night’s sleep devoid of tense

Elsewhere the town yawns, crawls
The carts of fruit and grain drag, the streets thaw in
Mist exhaled by the mountain over us, your white
Shirt and your reflection in the diary counting
Another day passed by lonely, not knowing
How to meet the evening without an answer


Morning. A footstep plants In the balcony.
A city opens again

Eschewing the temple, an urchin
Runs into the butcher’s lane
To find hanging bodies
He carries their image forward

A coconut cracks. The thick demise
Of slow incense, fills a store
Water sprinkled for unseen deities

Inside the curtain inhales, the lungs
Of the room charred by smoke
And last night’s debates, scatters
In leftover scraps and bottles

Your second alarm rings; murky and withered
You rise to go to battle


Enamored by passing rickshaws carrying children
Supported by the railing outside the market

Around him a swarm of crows poking
at garbage, at
the lady who carries fish bones
a cheap stock

Curiously scanning her plastic bag
For her attention by raising a flag made of scraps
That drama becomes

Nothing happens thereon
And even the sky that once flushed a painting
Dims down and turns indigo
Scampers into the bakery’s rear
Rests in the fragrance of an empty oven