Talking roofs

Ratis poems for Hatto

"I also think that poetry should talk to architects, engineers and planners. As i find that the planing in Indian houses are so conservative these days, I remember that in my childhood days, the roof of the houses were side by side, so we could easily talk to our neighbour at late night even. Those days in summer... we used to sleep on the open roofs (you will be laughing ) but it was fun, telling stories about ghosts were the best things. That culture made us close to each other, but these modern houses are totally separated from each other. And children don't have times for stories, they just play on laptop..... my god... what will they do....in my family, I am the only person who writes poetry and that is because I spend my childhood in my village with my villager aunt. I think the modern society should reconstruct the system."

Rati Saxena, letter from 6.9.2012

All Those Sins

All those sins

I’m trying to forget,

Piled on my back

Growing like mountains

Now I am

A snail

Slow, slow and slow

Time is changing

I look at the mirror

The Calendar is

Only an echo of figures

Embracing the umbilical cord

I want to sleep

In the womb

Of eternity

So?

Should I pass again through

Pangs of pain?

Everyone in search of

A flute

To entice

All the rats

Chinese astrology

Says

This is the Year of the Rat

I offer my karma

To astrologers

Now they tell me

All about my

Eating, drinking and sleeping

Where’s my upper part

Above the neck?

The Hymn of the Lost Slippers

The taste is very bitter, from tongue to throat, down to the intestine, bitterness Everywhere,

Everything’s bitter, the toothpaste in the tube, the broken brush. everything

Till nightfall, everything was fine, a good sleep and endless dreams . . .

Most of the dreams disappeared with night, but they came with me up to the morning

And stuck to my eyelids till the eyes opened

There were a number of slippers and I was searching for mine

There my flight’s ready to go, here my slippers are missing

Why should I give up my journey because of slippers? I told myself

But a journey by air without slippers is out of the question

How many steps can I walk without slippers?

These slippers are my feet and my knees;

And my legs? Oh, they’re only sticks

Which can’t walk without slippers;

Slippers are my identity, my personality

They’re the height by which I can touch the sky

They’re my present and future

The beauty of my dress;

Reincarnation

I placed my genes

On the laboratory table

And thus began my search

For my past life’s story

My genes fluttered, but didn’t fly

I understood too well

I was never a butterfly

Never a bird

My wings never had that verve.

My genes lay still

Didn’t even crawl

I never lived the earthworm’s life

Forget the tales of ants and honeybees

I never could join the queue

I saw myself as a table, a chair too,

And then came to know

I was a window

The open wide

That the world looks through;

When closed, a number of worries

Are behind me

I extend the window

To the floor,

Make it a door,

Open it and come out

Tongues

My mouth teems with tongues

Of myriad hues and flavours

And turns of phrase

At first there was

Just one with me, just one

That I put on early in the mornings

And gave over to the care of sleep at night

I never realized when

The thing grew like the Aloe plant

And began to divide

Into two, then three and four sections

Sleep even now would take part in talking

With the help of tongues,

Days would lose their count

And dream-world be struck dumb

Yet in the midst of so many tongues

I have none of my own

Return Journey of Moonlight

Mother is sleeping in

Mortuary’s freezer

Closed eyes

Hands on chest

Ready for purification in fire

Behind the glass cover

Her closed eyes are

Two butterflies sleeping

We feel as if they’ll flutter

At any moment

And forget to cry

Geeta takes us

Beyond death

After the fourteenth chapter

Mother's bed is empty

Where is she?

Under the glass?

Or sitting here

Somewhere

Listening to the Geeta

Which she asked me to read

Long long ago

We aren’t able to cry

Not even smile

But can’t be quiet

She comes into our talk

Into our tears

And sometime with a smile

We feel her presence everywhere

Forty-eight hours passed

on the icy bed

She had arthritis

Isn’t this too much cold for her?

Today she must go

Not by walking, she’s forgotten how to walk for years,

Nor with the support of that stick she’s never liked

But on four shoulders

As she came in a palaki after marriage

Mother’s taking a bath

But why on the bed?

Mother’s wearing clothes

While sleeping

Mother’s getting ready

On the wooden structure

“You still have swelling in your right foot;

How will you climb so many steps”?

Asks her daughter

She didn’t stop

She started her journey to make

Fire more pious

Don’t cry, mother asked us

This time rain came early

Maybe the sky didn’t know

Mother's horoscope

In the lap of Geeta

Old and crumbled

Falls down as soon as

Someone touches the paper

Every daughter has her own experience

And her own smell of memories

Of mother

I’m trying to peep in the corners

Which are broken down

And find the life she lost

Knots are open

The pot is broken

Wood is laid around

Grandson has given his offering to her fire

“May the doors of heaven…”

Elder daughter asks her god

The youngest one cries for

Her lost nest

“The Mother of a daughter

Is a queen”

Father's saying became

Alive

Mother liked the river

And its banks

The boats on banks

The sway of the boats

A bath in river

And her own Krishna deity

Mother who’s hidden in a small bag

Was so happy meeting her friend River

There came a moon shadow

And then a bubble

Life is over

She was the story

Which is finished

She was power

Which is diminished

She was moonlight

Which went back

She was a chapter

Which is closed

Final

“Final”

This word fills me

With fear these days:

Final wish, final moment,

Final meeting…

I have no regrets

that I’ve met no one in years

For I believe he lives

and exists

in some corner of this world

I hope , always

that he will come, one day

Without warning, smile and grasp my hand

Perhaps even embrace me…

But what if this is our final meeting?

Then the sinews of my throat, like the Koel’s,

Will cry out and

Break free from its cage

Will it flow out in a stream of blood?

This “final” word written with my life,

Will it finally be cleansed free?

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