GREEN GIRL SEASON
ANJANA BASU
Spring shuffles its shoulders
Slowly slipping into leaves
The green dress stitched with pink and blue
Second best before summerŐs parade of purple heather bloom
She dances on the hills
Trails her perfume through the closed brown rooms
Till the day follows helpless
Never mind about summer, summerŐs old
Slip out of your green dress again
And veil yourself in mist
SUNDIAL
ANJANA BASU
The sundial counts the happy hours
By no calendar I know
The sun falls casually and the shadow
Passes slow
As the shadow of a hawkŐs wings drifts at my feet
My suitcase is full of summerŐs hours
Blue bells and green leaves, the cawing of rooks
And the slow evening creak of the castle door.
Trapped in a jewel box
Blue enamel arch sky
Green velvet grass
The air is thin
I buss like a bluebottle, drone like a bee seeking escape
From a surfeit of easeÉ
WAITING TO BE READ
ANJANA BASU
Beauty every day opens
The same book,
Green pages illuminated
The blue air bowl of an old classic
The story that begins every morning
And darkens with the setting sun
By not one paragraph does it deviate
Through flying leaves surprise
And foxes, a deerŐs magic flight
Into forests of fable.
I am ungrateful, clattering trams
Weave jerky tales through my peopled head.
THE STRAIGHT TRACK
ANJANA BASU
The narrow road drawn burin straight
Leads between the white grasses
Under the blue sky
Straight, unwavering a road not taken you would think
Except for the verges lined with sharp glinting blue of tin
Under the culvert, a scrawled chalk sign of someone young
Working perhaps at night in the shadows
Hands creeping into hands where the wind cannot spy
By day I am the only wanderer looking for signs
Tracing hoofprints that lead to empty fields
Tired of the hollow whistling wind.
SCOTCH BLUE
ANJANA BASU
Bright hard jewel blue sky
Not your kind of blue
Not the dreaming smoke blue of the thorn trees
The blue of evening where the lover sees his girl
In the soft cattle hoof mist
This is blue summer weather
The bees buzz head over heels in daffodil love
EverythingŐs clear, the fall of a hawk the plume of river smoke
White jet plane trail for miles of open sky
I prefer your dim blue uncertainties.
IN THE GARDEN
ANJANA BASU
A neat childŐs hand
Writes love letters
Things I cannot presume
To understand
On the green hills
The gods trumpet
Their own praises
Through daffodils.
In the sunlit garden,
My stupid heart
Filled with fear
Asks god for pardon.
|
