RAIN
Ashok Niyogi
I am a blood-and-guts guy.
But I will write vegetarian poetry
And get by.
The bud flowers
And the stares at me suspiciously
As if I ever wanted to be
Anything but a bumblebee.
The first raindrop punctuates my buzz,
Symmetry in the rain.
Birds and bees are as formidable a combination
As the proverbial stork,
But not so formidable as afternoon fumbling
In borrowed rooms
With crumpled bed sheets and curtains drawn
And the pitter-patter on the tin roof of the portico.
Symmetry in the rain.
Paddy fields are lush with a live green
That hits your guts.
Vanilla creepers climb areca nut palms.
A spastic looks out of a stained glass window.
Football is played with long passes.
Symmetry in the rain.
I hide my cirrhosis behind trees and bushes.
My blood irrigates them well.
Even across barriers
Of societal disapproval, there is
Symmetry in the rain.
Milch cows whose udders go dry
Are left astray on city streets
To rummage through garbage bins.
In India, to slaughter them is a crime
Though they create an awful stench
That wafts across the
Symmetry in the rain.
Half constructed bridges crumble into backwaters
A sickly Donna Paula (1) with a fist in her mouth
Stares at the crashing waves in startled awe.
Old Portuguese roofs cave in
In plantation country on full moon night.
Ogres dance madly to the drumming of the raindrops.
Symmetry in the rain.
Airplanes think of landing and then change their mind.
Afternoons are restless, evenings ominous.
Cigarettes are stale, just vodka and ale.
Fish smells on Miramar (2).
Clouds are low and uniformly dark
Laden with God on a celestial throne.
His scimitar sends heads rolling on the sand.
On the wet sand the lone mongrel is having a lark.
The rain has stopped and there is silence.
Symmetry in the rain.
Mongrels are mongrels
Either because they are the offspring of mongrels
Or because some master in his petulance
Threw them out to the
Symmetry in the rain.
Seas churn, planets burn,
Babies newborn are speared on swords,
Women raped in front of their sons.
Evil hunts well in time with music.
Symmetry in the rain.
A snake slithers across the road
In front of your car,
Homeless and destitute, its hole flooded.
Casual workers have gone back to Bihar (3)
And coconut trees are afraid of the sea.
There is a peculiar cadence
Symmetry in the rain.
(1) Donna Paula – A lady who lived in the Governor’s house in Panjim, Goa, India. Legend goes that she used to look across the seas for a lover who never returned and threw herself on the rocks and died. But actually she died of tuberculosis as told to me by a family whose ancestors were her neighbors.
(2) Miramar – The beach nearest the Governor’s house in Goa.
(3) Bihar – A poor province in the Indo-Gangetic plain.
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