The Spirit House 

By whose hand is the evening

painted in stillness?

 

Dark pillow of clouds beneath

which swallows are frenetic.

 

Sunset is a smear of mauve-gold,

of drums and motorbikes.

 

At this hour, the temple

pagodas are carved silhouettes,

 

our thoughts are framed by arbors.

Sandat and frangipani scarcely

 

beg the sky’s empty bowl.

Ducks reel in the glittering rice.

 

The leaves are enamelled after rain,

our words have no echoes.

 

Why do I doubt that hungry gods

prey upon the butterflies’ dance?

 

Tonight, I heard a god’s orgasm

turn to stone by the Spirit house.

The Deva Loka

The road leads us away from the temple of Parvati,

from the iris of the spotted hawk, red and gold satin,

the smoke of burning dhoop and coconut offerings.

Away from bells touched by the fingers of pilgrims.

As we wind across the range down steep hairpin bends,

we are losing our mukti, already forgetting what we have left,

the deva loka. The red dirt crumbling beneath our sandals

was the undoing of nama-rupa, and a reminder of Shiva’s hip

thrust in tribhanga, against the gravity of this place.

Beyond us, the peaks of Trisul, Kamet and Nanda Devi,

the Gharwal Himalayas, binding like a white turban

wave after wave of denuded hills and barren ramparts.

Blood-coloured as a lotus, the sun descends, setting

alight the candles of juniper, sal and bhojpatra,

the sky’s oxides, the dust of Dehradun.

Each bend in the road is a new discovery, an act of faith.

We glue our gaze to what lies ahead: a crossing of cattle,

donkeys weary from the day’s toil, goats feeding on riverine scrub,

children playing cricket, the maids and gopis of some myth

or chanda collecting fuel and water, the road workers,

constructionists and wielders, dressed in thongs and scarves,

carrying their hoes, spades, sieves.

Soon we’ll be back in the town with its car horns, its tinkle

of cycles and rickshaws, its smells of oilcake and cardamom.

We’ll return to the house, as vendors close their stalls,

as monkeys loping from a telegraph wire cast shadows,

as a street-sweeper burns his rubbish for warmth.