From “A Self to Hold the Self”

You broke from

my branch to fly.

Without you I’m lost

to Maya. This dooryard treeless.

Shade and illusion

join limbs

to hammock the path.

What are mother, father, brother, nephew

but whispers of my own self;

in the next world

what of relation?

Saiya, whose is this hand;

whose is that hand?

____

aasa versus aafat

which precedes the other?

hope and pain

so simple the word substitution

like a body possessed by spirit

one incarnation

another incarnation—

Which courtyard which tree?

Only gaps then

gasps.

____

’E mean fe seh how me punish you been go ’wat—gan from hiya. Me na get none kine mine fe do nutin’.

Me see de whole place empty fe so, yuh gan an’ na get non place fe me siddung.

Me mai-baap na deh, me bhai ke pickni na deh.

Na sas, sasur, nephew none bady na deh.

So come so done.

Me mus hol’ me own han’.

____

 

____

Dark friend or self

hope or despair in velvet

loneliness—

No plant reaches from here

to the sky;

this is not a house

             nor a court.

To think of descent:

who comes after

            the eye, watching the dream,

the mind watching the eye

the letter into sense.

A self to hold the self,

warm skin on warm

skin?

____

Moon na deh Chanda Mamu

dur gaile an’ black black ratiya lef’ hiya.

De eart’ de mati barren

             na mud na man deh.

Mati mean fe seh

             none ground none soil.

Mati mean fe seh

             none bady none jahaj-bhai

             na deh.

So talk plain—

             whe’ an’ how tree go grow

when abi na get tree dis side?

____

 

____

A bitter leafed tree

greens between the cracks of hope

and pain; blues berries.

____

Only at night

             between wake or thought,

between tree and leaf,

flesh to sinew grafted

as night to moon.

What is illumination without

ligament?

            Why trouble imagery:

a ship wheel to steer

             into the Unreal.

Yes, I’ve studied Vedanta,

my own bone crown

              sutured and sutured and sure

until like a leaf my

chlorophyll burned

first fire then gold—

a metaphor for waking,

a new body’s eyes glint

             by pyre light.