All we imagine as light*
Oceanic haze — speckled fire tongues —
a gleaming moon’s silver.
Melancholic nurse-women abandon cities;
their heart’s blue — fixed to whales in migration.
Ageless stones — fallen from marine bosoms
rise to the night’s symphony,
mimic the hollow sweep
of tarpaulin-blue.
Our histories of hiding
embalm a rare nocturnal crescendo —
we swirl through holy darkness
burning and yearning for god’s velvet;
slipping the pink heat of navels
into the night’s enchantment.
Rain-scented skies hibernate —
a canvas of pale transience.
Shadows lift screens — liquefy,
the language of light.
*The title of the poem is inspired by the film, ‘All we imagine as light’ by Payal Kapadia. It won the prestigious Grand Prix Award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, 2024. The poem also refers to the film’s idea of loneliness and the melancholic night air of cities.
Bangalore, May, 2024
Nocturnal Beasts
Heart-animals race through the night
to reach a home inside your home.
The day’s thunder is not enough.
They pierce darkness — light swells —
a sharp clamour of neon fumes;
a glossy glaze over middle-class poverty.
Everyone wants the bluest sky—
screens to display digital firmaments
defeating the glamour of fossil ink.
I see Tom Ford’s chic violence — radiant beasts
leap, crawl and cry.
Nocturnal screeches disarray
geography’s silence.
Hyderabad, June, 2024
Rangoon Creepers
Rain-fragrant creepers illume dull days —
soft petal-quintets
stupefy my office greenery.
Pink-red astral faces —
their beauty won’t sooth
blood-burnt children.
Yet I cannot withhold admiration.
Floral flamenco halts my heart —
I arrange poems not papers or the syllabus.
Rhythms of fragile elegance
trace my lover’s scented-rise —
his heady, wet breath— the fall of clustered de(vines)
Qutub Shahi Tombs, Hyderabad
Mausoleum-magnificence
emerge from materiality.
You and I — two homeless synapses
speculate buried dynasties;
trace empires of violent dazzle
on shivering canopies.
We occupy sun spots;
turn astral-red pomegranates,
calligraphed arches
into ‘electronic dust’.
Parakeets on scarred-skin domes
raise a clamour of kinship.
Thread-wrapped Banyans
stun us with silence.
I brought us among the dead
to confirm injured hearts;
to preserve, wordlessly,
stone works of togetherness.
But you exceed.
Your eyes don’t gather sediments —
in the cool, sunless vault
of Quli Qutub Shah,
they illumine a window —
revealing a city, you built only for me.
Palash*
Fire blades
slice the air.
You and I swirl in prayer—
Dervish-bodies ignite
palash-prologues.
*In the Northern and Eastern part of India, thickets of Palash flowers announce the arrival of spring.
Their orange radiance in forests and the cool suburbs of the city signify ‘regeneration’. To me, they are spiritual cleansers.
