Travelling

I have not put pen to paper
in so long.
I have been writing
poems

in my mind;
daydreaming in elastic prose,
talking to myself in Eliot, Roy,
imitating the woman's voice
from crowded metro stations
in dilli. Vishwa Vidyayala:
doors will open. Please stand back.
I am lost in language. I must make words.

I have strange dreams sometimes;
one long afternoon in a guesthouse
on a lazy Rishi Valley day, I dreamt
myself walking in the forest
wrapped in the same white bedsheet
I slept in, austere, as if I were on a
pilgrimage. Half-asleep, half-lost,
I named every plant I saw. The dream
was half made of image, half of words.
The air crackled with poetry. It sounded
more like prayer.

There is so much I want to say.
For months it brims over, and then
for months I am fallow. A tired field.
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. (1)
A hundred voices are leaving bruises on me.
This is just the way it's meant to be.

*

I have not been home for more than a week.
It is bittersweet - the comfort and the complacency;
it always has been. Home seems to stay the same
but I am not. I am travelling.

I still cannot define poetry. I get tongue-tied.
I hope I am able to impress. Somewhere, I still worry,
the mermaids, I do not think they will sing to me. (2)
I do not know what it is, this constellation, a poem,
but I know what I want to create. Something made
of dust and water, an infusion of scale and feather,
bruise and mist. (3) Something solid, firm, not one word
more than necessary, something that stands erect and
sturdy, stronger than me. I want to create something
that isn't afraid to sway, something that leaves enough
space for anybody to enter, leave, possess it as they may.
Something made of air. Something that shines in mellow
evening light. I want to make magic. With words.

Sitting in various buses in various countries
I marvel at the horizon. The sun beats down
hardest before it begins to dip, stains the blue
of horizon a faded purple, orange, pale grey.
Every day, I worry that I am not writing.

The sunset was beautiful in the evening,
a few hours ago. Today I munched on the
final strands of prose of the book I was reading,
let myself fall down the rabbit hole headfirst, no
hesitant touch, no gentle withdrawal. The words
lit up with the passing beams, they shone yellow
and rose on the page. I could taste them: wholesome,
yet hollow. Every word as a good poem. Every word
a country I passed through, a new horizon I watched.

There are so many places to see. So much to learn,
so much to read. I have not put pen to paper
in so long, but I must give myself time.


(1) Arundhati Roy
(2) T.S. Eliot
(3) Nayyirah Waheed