Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Rabindranath Tagore

 

In the auction-room, toy trains wait like ribs

to be eaten, they smell like wet sacks

full of delicious smoke, darned with swollen 

fingers in the cold of a Kashmiri morning.

 

I smile as the pigeons hum into life

so sweet and forgetful was my pain;

the sands of the Ganges shake like a dog

who has slept in mud in the slippery-shining

mud flats - I do not know where

is the flute; in the hull of a boat maybe

its tone is wet,

splash splash splash is my heart splashing

with blood and nervousness.

she is sailing to decorate a birth.

all the labels are laughingly locked away 

she laughs as i scratch his furry back

a fine coxcomb of time flashes into the mirror

a penumbra of  kisses spreads 

stamped and crushed on the lips of my pillow

as we lie down on these hills of thirst

where I yearn for a waterfall

to stop me burning in the sun's rays 

and so that you can dance

like a fountain, in all its shimmering lightness.