Birthplace with Buried Stones: Poems

Lost Garden

94 Lost Garden I a space without history— at the rim of the pond grandmother loosens her sari, Her skin glistens, utterly bare. no one remembers this. lotus petals flicker under the axle tree. Tree of heaven they call it in the family. By its roots grandfather made a fire, tossed in her poems, Poor things, penned in black ink. She had folded them into finicky squares, Buried them in her jewel case with ravenous rubies, Slow sift of sapphire, Poems of no climate Words halting, quick with longing For a man whose name no one knew. Two whole months she took to her bed Her hands bent under her, refusing what food she could. One night she stumbled out, ran her fingers over scorched bark— Alstonia scholaris—what was left of his body Imagined reliquary, Blushing like koi Fed from her own hand. 95 II Syntax surrenders To an axe biting into wood, and hearing small shocks from my past I know it’s all over— The years of childhood, The Innocence of Before and after, Seasons of rain, fragrance of burnt blossoms and under the axle tree, stars musk scented, acutely unreal. In the shadow of that tree mirza Ghalib comes to me, lamb’s wool cap askew, flecked with blood— I tried to wash it in your grandmother’s pond, he said. I saw it was crowned With speckled eggs. He knelt on the ground where a tree once stood— I can see through this hole to the island city Where you’ve gone to live, In the glory of the Beloved all borders vanish. I saw her then in moonlight, a girl whose breath was like my own. Her wrists were stumps. Her black hair blew into resurrection waves, She could not comb it back. She was grandmother and she was me, and she skipped up the diamond stairs into the sky. 96 III In glowing heat, in blessed synchrony I saw what Ghalib saw— Houses with their eyes plucked out, Books knifed, goblets shattered Townspeople, some in soiled dhotis, Twirling from the lampposts. O lilies he wrote on his sleeve, Your mouths are filled with dust. love draws us down into history. men on horseback carrying incense and myrrh, all the way from mecca to manhattan, dream of a garden where a poet sips wine From the crook of your elbow— O girl with moonlit hair whose wrists are stumps! Then whispering so I had to stoop to hear: Beloved my body is scarred with age Fit for burial, While yours gleams rainbow colored. In the rain washed trees There is nothing to see but nakedness. ...