To Eros : I (1993)

Memory tarnished
by time’s
inconsequences.

The lady piously sheltered
Beneath her sari’s hood,
So young, yet with child
And for that matter, a bald grey husband.
Does she not wish to glance
With timidity, or adolescent curiosity,
Does she not wish me to stare
And let my fingers stray
Beyond the bus-seat’s bar
Onto her sheltered slender neck
And below, I guess, to caress her heart?

O look at that pregnant woman
In straining kameez
And bulging protuberances, so inviting,
Yet with a child (never there be none)
And a bucket, straining above a water tap.
She knows not I exist
But the reaching hand
In silent prayer
For the tap to transform into a helping hand,
To hold the bucket and the child,
And another still clasped at her waist
(to the many-handed One),
Sharing the ten months’ weight (or is it wait?)
And togetherness, as at ecstasy
Or was it mere release
Of a disinterested mortal?

Alone upon the hotel’s white sheets,
Wishing they were rumpled, stained and wet,
Is there such reality across the flimsy wall
Or another soul probably pounded
Wishing for another’s company,
“O why don’t you see how we are,
The tremors and the surge restrained,
And in realization of its cause, use me?”
Does she not cry so?