2010-poems

MOTHER

Her hair touched her knee,
a waterfall.
I divided it into nine
and gave a name to each plait.
Then nine muses appeared from them,
nine goddesses of art.

My mother was a seer,
poet and prophet.
She went on weaving
words and lines
into a kerchief as large as the sky.

Then one day
she turned into a spiral statue
and fell silent.
Or was she silenced?
Who buried the truths?
Mother’s pyre
follows me even to this day:
That hair
divided into nine plaits
twists round and strangles me.

JOURNEYS

The shadow of words
the shadow of lines
luminous cells that
look for colours within the shadows
The shadow of the body
spoke to me
about its journeys
into the Himalayan valleys
to become transparent,
to attain transcendence.
Each nerve turned onto a river,
a road that flows.

Is the body no more than a vehicle
for the spirit’s journeys?

THE EYES’ WIND

She was reduced to a mere body
as the eyes’ winds roamed round her
in stormy whirls.
Many kinds of eyes,
green, blue, yellow, black,
pierced her like arrows,
like time’s hurtful gestures.
The arrows of eyes flew past
the salt of her sweat
to lodge in every hair follicle.
Hairs stood up in the transparency of the wind
and fought, like soldiers.