Visions of Kali and Other Poems

In Palmy Lands

In palmy lands, by sapphire seas,
On moonlit beaches ringed with trees,
I lay with my young love at ease
And smoked the weed of vision.

We watched the idle days go by
In dreams we traced across the sky,
And changed the world in our mind’s eye
As though it were illusion.

But worlds they do not change so fast,
Men’s minds do not escape the past;
The maddest ways of life outlast
All efforts at revision.

In time we came to see our cult
As remnants of a failed revolt
Against a madness none could halt
Before the last confusion.

In palmy lands, when I was young,
I little dreamed I would be one
To curse the setting of the sun
And hold life in derision.

My Muse
(Homage to Heinrich Böll)

My muse is a whore
Who comes with a crooked grin
And a manic light in her eye,
Her fingers reaching
To unzip my heart.

My muse is a ghost
That waits outside on the landing,
Beckoning in my side-vision
Fading as I turn
Bilking me with the air.

My muse is a hag
Riding my shoulders like a broomstick,
Beating me on past midnight
With the tail of a dead cat
As I murmur: Sleep.

My muse is a succubus
Coming between sleep and waking
With soothing hands
And beauty pledging to slake
Ineffable thirst.

My muse is a shadow
In a dark robe and a hood,
Who sits beside me on a rock
And listens without a word
To wordless complaints.

My muse is an emptiness
That walks beside me in the street
Through the world studded with eyes,
Making me remember
Some unknown comfort lost.
 
(Geneva, 5 May, 1985)

Vision on a Delhi Street (1976)

In the back room of the restaurant
On the Paharganj, just up from the Venus Hotel,
Stoned, I felt the heat—needed air, stumbled
(Muttering excuses to my French companions)
Outside onto the doorstep.
There I sat
In the cooler air, watching the night scene,
The flow of human debris along the banks
Of an Indian street.

A child detached itself
From the background blur, presented herself
Before me—a young lady of five or six,
Scratched a calf with one toe, held out a hand:
“One rupee, please.” Then, as I shook my head,
Relishing a longer game, she smiled sidelong,
Turned face to shoulder, began flirting
Coyly, absurdly.
And for an age of minutes
She ran through the tricks of her beggary:
She pretended to limp as though crippled,
She knotted her hands as though deformed,
Rubbed her eyes till they cried,
Twisted her cheeks into pinched misery
Then smirked slyly in my face—   
She showed me her art, her beggar’s craft,
Her small genius of survival.
And as I smiled encouragement,
laughed at her performance,
In my stoned haze being drawn inside her foolery,
I saw in her actor’s eyes another soul
Crying out: “I am here.”

Even after I gave her money she played for me,
And when her brother joined her they played a game
Squirting each other in the eye with lemon peels,
A special spectator sport.
          And then
Their mother sidled over, her naked toes wriggling
In the carpet of dust, smiling shyly, and the boy
Asked me, grinning and squirming girlishly before me,
If I wanted to boomba his mama.

I shook my head and they drifted off,
The Untouchable whore and her beggar brood
Learning her trade while frisky pups at her heels,
Glancing back at me, grinning, flirting,
At home in gutters, amid walls of legs,
The dust their carpet and piles of rubbish
Their bargain stores—they looked at me,
An alien from another world, rich enough
To buy them a year’s survival, and they smiled
(Incomprehensibly without hatred)
Greetings as though to a brother.

 Kathmandu 1976

As you leave Durbar Square
and walk along Pig Street
the human shit gives way to animal shit.
Pigs, calves, chickens vie with the children
in shitting the most.
There are bog-lands in the street
pot-holes filled with shit
favourite crapping places of every species
of domestic and non-domestic animal.
The whole living world is engaged
in an unremitting
bowel movement.
The very earth seems to be straining,
the very air, the very trees
are shitting copiously after their kind.

As you come out of the town and cross the bridge
upstream you can see water-buffalo
shitting in the river
downstream humans
washing clothes, scooping drinking water
occasionally shitting also.
Outside the huddled houses in the sun
(with the odd bull’s head on a stake)
women crouch searching for lice
in their children’s hair.
Further up the road towards the Monkey Temple 
monkeys squat searching for lice
in their offspring’s fur.

The monkeys never look you in the eye;
they look sidelong past you.
They can’t figure out how you can be
so like them, yet not them.

At the Monkey Temple the faithful offering
heaps of coloured rice fight a running battle
with thieving monkeys. 
    They, ignorant brutes,
want to eat the rice
which is destined for the stone gods
and the arcane spiritual purposes of man.

Fortunately the worshipping humans
are lazy in their vigilance.
The monkeys manage to get off
with at least some of the fruits
earth has painfully grown
to feed more shitting animals.