Translated By Arvind Krishna Mehrotra & Rosinka Chaudhuri
Such is their greed that no part is thrown away. Not crown, not base, not even the eyes gouged out from the rind by the eye-eaters. But why do I speak ill of them? I’m no better. When I throw away the rind my...
Lady of all powers, In whom light appears, Radiant one Beloved of Heaven and Earth, Tiara-crowned Priestess of the Highest God, My Lady, you are the guardian Of all greatness. Your hand holds the seven powers: You lift the powers of being, You have hung them over your finger, You have...
An extremely hubristic, unflattering, and accurate self-portrait, this episode saw Halberg in direct conversa- tion with Cain, questioning his own methods. The passing allusion to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin appears to reference Chapter 4, stanza XXXV: “But I myself read my bedizened /fancies,...
Raven steals your name for an autumn joke: buries it along with you under the broadest hemlock known to squirrel or chipmunk. He croaks it’s too bad you were awake for the event. He accuses you of boring him with the same old questions over...
Many of the oldest priests were there, their ceremonial robes in tatters but the knives they held appeared bright and recently honed. Most of these men had not been seen in years, having with the passage of time drifted away without offering any...
Aji held onto the brown and black patched calf’s tail A pundit sang her mantra for 43 minutes Years Aji understood the calf would lead her through oceans into her next journey My Aji and I are alike We have silver hairs I am holding on to a dream tail hoping it...
Pull down the crows from the sky Piya, summer’s blood is barely dry What is a poem if it cannot try To call you a ****ing ***** or die Whispering in your arms, this lie When Kabira met Keats, he said: Our poems make canopies...
After the small bomb of his orgasm I stole his mother’s crucifix, darted through the back doors.
I never saw the dogs. Quick like Krishna’s gopis they swarmed me. Pink tongues of threat and purebred musk. Rosaries of saliva. Jaws open like warm ovens for bread and fish.
There is a place not far from here where two rivers meet the sea, a shore dark and pitted as a caiman’s back. My thoughts drift here when I pray to you, to swollen water and lonely spit, tide-risen belly of a mangrove god.
Something in altitude kindles power-thirst Mere horse-height suffices the emir Bestowing from rich folds of prodigious turban Upon crawling peasants in the dust Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped In princely boredom.
I too have known A parching of that primordial palate, A quickening to manifest life Of a long recessive...