Words Unspoken

170

I need a mouth as wide as the sky
to say the nature of a True Person, language
as large as longing.

The fragile vial inside me often breaks.
No wonder I go mad and disappear
for three days every month with the moon.

For anyone in love with you,
it's always these invisible days.

I've lost the thread of the story I was telling.
My elephant roams his dream again.
Narrative, poetics, destroyed, my body,
a dissolving, a return.

Friend, I've shrunk to a hair trying to say your story.
Would you tell mine?
I've made up so many love stories.
Now I feel fictional.
Tell me!
The truth is, you are speaking, not me.
I am a mountain, and you are Moses walking there.
This poetry is an echo of what you say.
A piece of land can't speak, or know anything!
Or if it can, only within limits.

The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.

Why this distracted talk?
It's not my fault I rave. You did this.

Do you approve of my love-madness?
Say yes.
What language will you say it in, English or hindi, or what?
Once again, I must be tied up.

Bring the curly ropes of your hair.
Now I remember the story.
A True Man stares at his old shoes
and sheepskin jacket. Every day he
goes up to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat.
This is his wisdom, to remember the original clay.