Now ,in Delhi we cannot see one another.We cannot see the sky over us either.We can only see some vague shapes coming towards us,like some thoughts.They are vague like winter sky,as fog comes walking cat-silent on Delhi streets.
We burn our straw and send its blue smoke into the fog.We cannot see each other in smog.We can only hear small clouds of vapor emerging as words.
Her diary note ,of the eighteen century or thereabouts,says
“Finished Antigone,married Bishop”
Anne Carson says brevity is poetry.Prose is like house while poetry is like a man on fire running fast through the house.
Grandmothers diary note is pretty.Brevity is the wit of her soul.
After finishing Antigone she married Bishop? Has Antigone finally buried her brother? Poor Bishop had to wait .
She has set us on fire so we pass through it .
They hold my time captive all right but they crap all over.
Now ,as Anne Carson never liked Mona Lisa,we too never will.But we like her brevity.She says some one’s grandmother made a diary entry in 18th century:
“Finished Antigone,married Bishop”
How smooth.
Cops are escaping the terrorists .The terrorists are escaping bodies.Everyone is escaping videos.If only they would go in a deep jungle to say ,should we finish with them? In the jungle are ravines.There are no videos.
Ginsberg is into sun flowers.The sun stinks on an oiled ocean.Greenland is melting away. Cyclone kyat has escaped our coast towards the deeper oceans.
The poetess is worried about brevity.Her poems spring from a melting.Aavaj niche karo (bring down the voice).She is escaping from long form.She understands the beauty of husband.
A pigeon flies into my balcony and sits on the top of the air conditioning unit.I thought it was moaning but there was no sadness spreading in the balcony.There were bits of the earth from the potted plants dug up by the pigeons beak and lying scattered in the balcony.
It is just holding my time captive, letting time hang luxuriously on my limbs.Limbs are not in hurry for a bath.Let the pigeon’s moans pause for a while for time to take over and I will start my water heater.
Poetry is everywhere in my early light pages.I have just to edit it to make it a day’s poem.
I edit some of them to bland prose ,into sentences that flow like light pages and yet are beautiful as light pouring forth from early windows.
Early windows let in light to fall on corner gods as they squat peacefully in their long trunks, smiling at moons.
I like this quote ofJames Tate
“Poetry is everywhere.You have to just edit it”
Which is what I am doing here.
In the balcony , short and narrow ,I have just enough space for a dozen dotted plants.The plants include a creeper or two.The plants attract one or two bird visitors.
A pigeon comes regularly and guttar- goos .God knows whether it wants to build a nest.This morning I found even a garden lizard behind a pot.How could it have climbed three floors?
While we are here and on the vacation, we see elephants and cats in our cumulus.
The elephants are flying heavily and the cats change their shapes too quickly.
From hibiscus grow their fragments.Fragments turn new wholes.
Poems are fragments with one or two images.Images are real things,real wholes.
The Morning is Just a Dream 