ANGELA
1. A Room in the rain
lights that shimmer in pain,
your anklets stab the silence
your face cracks down
in cinders of snow
as my smiles go up in mist
and we are floating again,
in a song-boat
on the fringes of this night
Angela,
these tunes are false
that snake in through your window
with the soot of the city
your hair streams down
like the raging skyline,
your sleeves are dripping with rain
your fingers scurry with joy
for a last shelter,
as I document your touch
in peace
Angela,
let’s burgle these clouded doors
that stand between us now
like night patrollers
and unhide the soft contours
of veiled delight
let reflections change forever
as we manufacture love
in this rain room
and when the night shrinks in sleep,
you shall search for a poet
who lives in songs
while I travel
through old diaries
for the ruins of your smiles
2. Last Station of love
Angela,
what was bothering you that day
when you took the night train
at the last junction?
light years in thought;
we lived a month on missed calls
and nothing else
whatever was left in the city
except the ghosts of a few poets
and nude strangers?
Angela,
we’re waiting
at the last station
of love
we’ve been waiting for years now
and colliding at times
in dream
when time breaths
in tiny splinters of sight
like another illusion
or the river curls up
at the solstice of vision
Angela,
we shall then meet across the waters
of this tiny blue opera glass
and try to read our past
in the fast headlight
of some passing vehicle
we shall glide on sounds
across the harbours of this city
we shall haunt
the windows of sleep
this December
as the moon
like a snowrose sickle,
hangs from her hinges
TO ANGELA, CONTINUED
Angela,
let us melt into the city
with a retreating question and a quicksilver glance.
We shall not know what it is to suffer
for a cause or a conflict,
or the million chronic doubts and mistakes
splashed across our minds.
We shall fly by the deserted window-panes
revealing empty rooms with stranded time
or the eyes of the lonely evening child
brimming with the brown chimney smoke,
playing with the corpse of rain.
What shall we not?
Let us remove the stains of shameless nights
and stare like muted clocks into each other’s eyes
as lighted streets in cloaks of speed
or silent bridges with neon hoardings
all collapse in a moment of breath.
Angela,
let us not crack the wind
or usurp the night with words.
Let there be tears,
only tears for the child who plays with the sky,
tears for the wind that repeats the dust
from last night’s feet,
and tears for the naked, moonlit bricks
wet with wine and sympathy.
Tears for you, tears for me.
We shall grow old like this
inside the pleasure of a moment’s infinity
when old brown asylums melt with a sigh,
or beggars on pavements crumble to dust
and grave, old lips tremble with whispers
over steaming cups of afternoon tea.
Which way to the Ganges, dear?
Which way to the funeral of evening hymns
and the letters and the kisses?
Which way to decay,
to dying voices and vanishing breath,
to falling hours and fading smiles?
* * *
Shall I undress you then
and place my head on your bare bosom
to seek refuge from the hours?
Shall I smile in peace
when the room flickers with distress
from this wild, endless continuity?
Yet there’s nothing to fear,
nothing to come, nothing to go,
nothing to hold dear.
There’s nothing to live with
except a few poems, lost faces
and blatant pessimisms at the stroke of midnight
when the city drops her lost pretences
like tired garments in bed
and slips into a mild, disturbed sleep.
Angela,
your hair is turning grey
and one or two wrinkles peep out
from beneath your hooded shawl.
The city is shivering
in atoms of dust.
Tired, endless feet trudge along
the fault lines of time,
shapeless, yellowed hands
that have still not known
the horrors of the universe.
Here comes the end of days
that were hanging dangerously
on the edge of a smile, a spoon and a cigarette.
Now is the time to hide
inside drain-pipes,
from those senile, dusty eyes
and the naked fingers in lamplight
struggling with the wriggling worm in bed.
Now is the time to mutilate
as you chase shadows on the window sill.
Now is the time to pause
in the middle of a sentence,
to think.
* * *
Shall I touch those feelings with my oblong verse
and erase the smile from your lips?
Malignant voices
with memories of time and corporate flesh
stink inside hotel rooms;
trams in tired, evening sun
roll past shops with food and women.
Then the dust, the sentence, the streets
and your bangles in bed
unite in rebellious epiphanies
of this contracting universe.
Angela,
let us escape to the custody
of those empty rooms with stranded time.
Let us be confined forever in ourselves
to be free.
We shall never know what it is to smile
inside the wounded breath of time.
DEATH-SONG FOR ANGELA
Wind-chariots of love
white or melting beneath the skin,
stations lost in midnight peace or rebellion,
Wild storm beneath your gown
and the crazy, green silence
of lonely hospital rooms
Angela,
stay a while here with me
in this land of pink and sleep.
Violin in your sleep,
softly we stand,
our fingers quietly kissing in sand and light.
I could be your little orange town
as you summon a magi in sleep,
I could be your dream.
A town in the skies,
all the roads here lead to sleep,
and little paraffin birds spread out their wings
in water and dreams.
White eyes among nude petals
thirst for the fragile beak of the sky,
your lips carve music in the clouds.
Once again,
our lips will waltz in touch
as I hold you in me
in this city of love.
Angela,
You shall touch me again
in love or sleep,
as the piano will find a beat
along the wounded strings of your heart.
Touch and angel lust,
your voice wild across the winter night
in my blue telephone,
Won’t you touch my lips
with a song or a kiss?
Won’t you cry,
my mad rain lover?
Blue sea-horses diving in your eyes,
fortissimo in your breast,
we lie down and shiver
beneath the porcupine breath of the sky.
Your eyes in my eyes,
your kisses fractured along the liquid, orange throat
of the lemonade evening,
here we are, lying down
amidst the sound and the city
in our little, paper-boat across the skies.
Glory of harmony in your starry laughter,
wet roses in your molten copper voice,
my finger runs along the wild black waves of your hair
like Neptune’s seas.
Beauty in the piano land,
mist and lovers beside the river,
your lips travel time
and spill ancient folklore of love.
Send me the fragrance of your breath
and some quatrains hidden in snow
as we remember old men leaning out of windows
in the December sun.
Death beside the ocean
in the purple carriage of winter,
your body worn in time and beauty
will sway like a wild flower in last ecstasy.
Dear Angela, my love,
the moon in her white gown, shall not know
what it is to wan inside a lover’s last sigh;
while the trees, the wind and light
will a build an epitaph for our kiss.
Our hands entwined in love,
our clocks melting down our thighs,
the rainbow will give rise to a new time.
Our faces and naked touch returning
to the soul of brown God
in the white lanes of sleep
leading to Brahma’s feet.
White sheets, white unslept pillows, white feet
and white song of parakeets rising like war
in this afternoon air of silence and radiance.
Your letters are little holy ruins
that make monuments for the ants
in rain; your voice anoints with joy
Aurora’s glowing horses of dawn.
Last smoke in your eyes,
last smoke from the chimneys of earth,
the last song for my fingers.
Amidst this love,
this ambrosial lust for lilies
and music from the stars
the song of vultures on earth
and specimens of slow, brown decay,
Angela,
I must leave you again
amidst the poem and tower
in the clouds,
amidst the elves and white lanes of sleep,
my fingers still stroking
the wild sitar in your eyes at sunset.
Let our love run through valleys in sleep,
like bloodstreams through the harmonica.
Let our death-song come to an end
in this land of camphor and blue.
Library of Mirrors 