The same Sun that clambers up
The East and slide down the West
to unfailing pop up the next dawn
The anxious Moon will go its
Monthly yoyo diet
while distant stars having emitted
Their light have died and gone
Into black holes of their own creation
The perennially forgiving Earth
Will nurture those cannibal species on it
Called human beings
She will throw a few tantrums of
anger, wet Tsunamis, fiery earthquakes
Yet still let fodder and food grow out of Her
To feed people and other gentler species
All this will still happen my darling
You will see, even after I leave
Yes my precious your hair shines silver
Like the glow of a Super Moon
You sit on your bed I have usurped
To watch me while I sleep
Well into the day
I hear you intoning prayers I learned
While dreaming of dinner cooked by you
A glass of white wine on the floor
Besides me, where I sprawl by your feet
Your orange carpet a little faded
Like a hazy Sunrise in Bombay
The cries of the paper boy, the milk man
rise up to your balcony
in a morning ritual all of its own
You, my man with velvet feet
Which have trodden rocky paths
That brought us so far
May I kiss you chastely on your brow?
Yes I shall hover around you
When you look out through your window
Madan holding your dinner warm
I will be that incense smoke
Curling sinuously around your beloved deity
whom you pray to
I will be the tears you shed
Abhishekam
From your eyes to the floor
I will be that pause as you clear
your throat, the familiar Manthras
Having a distance your never perceived
I will be the wide grin of the girl
you educate, the one who still
brings you flowers on Tuesdays
I will be the silence of he who calls you
“Re Kishan!”, the only one to do so
Now that your aunt is dead
I will be your pocket monster
Now retired into the pouch of Time
Someone your hand reaches out for
By your knee
I will be the gathering clouds of the
Bombay monsoons present unfailingly
I will be the song of vendors at the
Gateway of India, where the Taj waits
Remembering us becoming
What we were, what we will be
I will wait darling like a tortoise
Without its shell, the cockles of Time
concealed on this deserted
Beach of Time, with waves marking
The passage of days and nights
you have to live through
till you hold me again
Bring your golden spectacles
With you, in our next birth
Where we shall love
The nurtured and the Nurturer
Something I carelessly let slip
Through my fingers as I reached out
For steel balloons, filled with gas
Which glittered, but fell on me
Crushing all that was Life,
from my body