It is not necessary to have poems full of mendicants
and minarets, gurus and ghats, to contemplate an India of the soul.
ALASTAIR NIVEN

But the soul will be the colour of turmeric
                           spilt on white stone.

And the creature who lives in the soul
will count with her thumb
on the joints of her fingers.

Time will be slow
and Time will be concrete
and Time will be stuck
like a wet crow peering down
from a tree, broken and black -

Who is more jagged, the tree or the crow?
The crow peering down, his head so crooked
       so tilted-

Then the soul will be the colour of ferns
...