Two Poems

Words

1.

The word ‘slice’ makes one salivate.
You think of all the good times in your life.
The happy times

But what cake?
To whom do I owe the pleasure?
Never mind.

Cakes are eaten on all occasions
In all countries.

     & It isn’t as if some sleepless old man in the sky
Had of a sudden descended on a cupboard
Whacked you at 3am
With a ray of sunshine.

But it is very much like that.
There you are. You are the cupboard.
& ray is another such word.

Nice words to die with. You lie awake
More words to die with
Come rolling in
Nice ones
Mortal,
With a taste of life,

A bite.
But what of ? –


2.

Cake after cake falls silent.

Your eyes stay open.


3.

On a March night, it was
Virginia Woolf filled her pocket
With stones before walking into a river.

What river?
Are those stones rocks –
     In bits & pieces ?
          Never mind.
          
It is dark
In the dark you begin to wonder.

Think how she handpicked the stones.
Sorting & sizing
          Turning them over & over
A fastidious lady taking her time
In the amorphous dark
& then to die with ‘Bless you Leonard’ on her lips too.
                    The assorted stones she pocketed.
               The few she was happy with
Before lobbing herself in;

The heaviest by half.

Those of us who have life strapped to their chest
Life-long
Like a bomb.


4.

I feel your terror
3am
At my end of the bomb-shelter

I got up & made tea.

I read you, Mrs Woolf
With pleasure.

You write so well,
You make life bearable.


The World as Representation

1.

A woman
Who saw a man
Tied to a tree
& burned.
The woman.


2.

          As for the name & address of the Tree\
The ‘Country of origin’
The ethnicity. (‘single origin’ in small print
On the plain brown cover
Of the Trader Joe chocolate)
She said the day
She learned
What a man can do to another
The species
            The specimen
(You halt at the genus)
              The family
Class & classification
& watch it too
Like wood
With fire-retardant


3.

& the world et al fateless faultless on a Thursday
    As on a Tuesday,
In colour co-ordination
Blue socks, red sky, so
The village’s road infra-structure
Sewerage system, street names,
Mountains.
Their first car, her mother’s domicile at birth,
Father’s occupation
She didn’t say is of no importance
The Sun in its wisdom.
The world as representation
                    All plays a part
        The go-slow of leaves & the weather Pattern,
        The young husband crossing the road.
You do not ask
You do not ask the nation
Have you voted
How does one vote for the unborn?
You might say ‘Have you eaten?’


4.

‘& what is the plural of the brother of your parents?’
        When ‘the plural for the brother of Man’
Was the question
She had for
Her teacher
In the New World.
In dreams she still speaks the tongue of the Region,
In trouble sleep its rural accent.


5.

It is the fashion
He leaves the world
Their car, the village, their front door
                & the townsmen & women
What he thought
They had in common
               Until
At the town square
              By the fire she stood
The very medium of so collaborative
An act,
When they took action, it is
         As if the tree was designated
& he was the chosen.


6.

          When the end came
She didn’t object
         ‘You can only feel better now’
She was of the opinion.
She took the first train out of the region
With nothing more extraneous
Than what she was wearing
            As for her relation to the man
Not ‘in retrospect’ (little to speak of)
But retroactively, single
& childless a life she continues
To this day, she said,
‘Each day’
Only because she felt she was
Owed an explanation.
       For beyond the blind cause
Does the world also determine
What is survivable?

      & Who decides?
She felt certain – in these matters
She was not un-innocent
If only she hadn’t washed her hair the day Before, for instance,
& If only she had.
We thought ‘before & after’ were 2 birds
But they are one
The tree is garrulous
                Or just deaf
Deaf to expostulations &
Somnambulant
Destiny or destination
It can happen.
That the birds are one & one
& one
It makes a din.
There is sufficient reason.
The tree did not fall silent
Swirling the charred
                               the winged bits
The tree in name or form should pose no Problem.
It sheds the adjectivals in season

          ‘Accountable to generations to come’
The tree
The tree speaks the language of the corporate
It ‘manages its assets’.


7

Now in the ‘quarter past 3’ of her life
She said
                        She said
Pointing to a Made-in-China
Tree in a concrete pot
Some gewgaw installation in all innocence
            You needn’t blink:
            An object of studied
Institutional indifference
Endemically ‘Non-Violent’
She said in the Palm Court of the Shopping Mall
Not that it is of no importance
Name & Address of the tree
(Withheld)
Like that of the other person
                The genus the species
No, she did not say it is of no interest
What specimen of a man
The homo sapiens

Again she falls short.
      To spare the singular
We decry Crimes
The Crimes of a Nation
            So peculiar to Man
                       All pales
Pales into insignificance
Such as the mind is equipped to cope
         & as often return to
In the first person
The day she learnt ‘Men are not trees’
‘You can’t take them all down, No’
Here at the Bay Area Starbucks
We are in agreement.

    The world as simulacrum for half an hour
A gross effigy of a polyethylene cup
In the palm of your hand
‘Run!
&
You run into Men everywhere.’

            But for the one
That matters
The one who knew
          What she was like the day before
Hasn’t she just washed her hair
The only one
Who knew the difference

Is in heaven she said
          She is adamant
       The squiggle of a man
Crawls down the wood
By fire
     They were mistaken
He didn’t set out that day to betray Man or
Change a Nation
     & didn’t the World step aside as Representation? Yes but
Only because
She was present
The woman
     Nothing to show or tell
You sure can’t spot her
In the Shopping Mall

She has made her appearance
You will not meet again
                For whom
The World must pass
                            Or fail
Passes mainly
Fades back to Representation

The World corrects itself:
The World will survive the Species.
(Starbucks, Palo Alto, 29 June 2024 )