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Golden orioles
for Anju Dodiya
The window's aflame with sunset
but she isn't looking or really there.
She floats above the couch,
a hypnotist standing by
to catch her dreams. She's shivering,
afraid to close her eyes at
night:
Will her lids burn, her images escape,
her eyes fly away, a pair of golden
orioles?
The wakeful hypnotist falls asleep at last.
She drifts, the room too small
to detain her.
She dreams of flying naked through the air,
unhindered by the costume of
who she is.
Dome
for Masud
Dates never change
on the calendar of faith
but light and wind are playing tricks
with the past.
Words split like isotopes
in this peacetime landscape
of abandoned courtyards, empty cradles,
withered gardens and broken
roofs.
Only the madman, in his garland of dried flowers,
has the right of passage
here
and the blind beggar who recollects nothing
except the spider ticking in
his wired skull.
For a second, between two versions
of an echo, the past doesn't
happen:
the dome remains, a roc's egg
veined blue, shelled by wind.
Confess
to no crime of identity.
Wait until the guillotine falls
in the vast silence of the heart.
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