Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

Holiest of holy cities

Cursed by the Nazarene:

Nameless, faceless,

Besieged, bombed,

Occupied by militias, armies,

It's unbelievable that once

The messiah of peace walked your streets.

Now you are rubble,

Bomb-hit houses

Lying in a mangled haze

Your hospices filled with the dying

Now you show signs of prosperity

But death still waits at your doorsteps.

The Cedars are bereft,

Alleys are filled with twisted steel,

Your people are not given -

A chance to survive, make peace.

Inside you there are enemy streets

Where children fear to walk

Afraid of hidden gunmen.

Will you rise from this debris?

Bring peace to your proud monuments,

And foliate your naked Cedars

With the leaves of verdant summer

In their shades women wouldn’t wail,

Of disappearances, shootings, and ransoms,

Of men who misunderstand the love of God!

To a Reluctant Writer

You can pick meaning off words,

You can paint pictures;

You can laugh at them,

Who laugh at you;

You can mourn

The follies of the unwise.

To write is power,

Of words, thoughts,

Limitless and boundless,

As the sky above and earth below;

You will never be alone

When words churn in your mind.

You can be heartbroken,

And cry and cry;

But a poem would wipe tears,

Puts a smile on your face,

Erase the pain

Of loneliness and love.

So won’t you write?

A letter, a poem, an essay;

We would gladly plunge in its depths,

Smile at its humour,

Relish what pains it took you,

And forgive friendly trespasses.

Anthonybhai's Song

Anthonybhai’s Song

(In Mack English)[1]

Kya, re? Know something, men?

Dis big, big; new, new instrumen’

Mobile phone and internet, wot?

Such confusion really I neva thought.

This pre-paid-post-paid I don’t unnerstan’, please tell,

Anthony’s simply want to know, what the hell,

You are not to be seen only, these days,

And you don’t call, even on Sundays.

I feel you’re going far, far away,

Some fuckin’ Katlik boy’s come your way?

I will break his legs, just you watch,

I won’t let you be an easy catch.

I know pucca you are flirting girl,

It shows in de way your lips curl,

You have no patience only with me,

But for him, that bugger, you’ll bend and curtsey.

“Wot’s my fault?” I aks Fadder Fonseca, he say:

“Son, forget her, forgive and pray

Treasures and eternal life in heaven above

Are your rewards than this worldly grave.”

I say, no, Irene’s my senorita, Fadder,

I don’t want to be treated, no way, like a ladder

Another man to step and take my girl away,

To the holy alter; and then “I do” say.

---

[1] A pidgin dialect spoken by Goans, East Indians, Ango-Indians, and other communities mainly found on the West Coast of India.

Apocalyptic Rain

The Apocalyptic Rain

(Dedicated to: father who died on a rainy day.)

I

The day he dies

The rain murmurs on glass

Through night and day,

Like apocalypse is today, now

It courses down the eaves at 3.30 a.m.

At 4.30 a.m. it’s still trickling
In the hospital courtyard

Thinly

Wetly

Damply

Hungrily

Silently.

At home 
In the dark

We pause to look at the sky

And murmur, “It’ll never end.”

“The rain will take us as did father.”
"Will electricity come?"

We are wondering whether

The food will last

The oil lamp will burn till midnight

Till we sleep the wearied sleep

Of farmers and day labourers
Of those days

When only the rich had electricity.

And in the morning

We wake up in a daze

To hear the rain still pounding

Pitting the stones

Drilling holes into roads

Fearing the worst

The swirling deaths

Washed out homes

That came calling on July 26

The day the skies wept.

II

Once a boy
Skinny
Unprepared
Unaware
Hanging on to straws
Bibliophile

Who, when a rainy symphony plays,

With open book on knees,

Reads “Paradise Lost,”

And dreams of poetic fame

Lost in a haze of innocence

Unprepared

Docile

Ingenuous

Rebellious

Handsome

Ugly

Sensual

Unrefined

Uncouth.

“Will he ever survive this world?”

“Look at him, he is so silent.”

“Why is he so different?”

“How has he become thus?”

They ask
The ones who fail to prepare him
With their love.

III

The dream of trophy girls is now

The tattered cloth of a mendicant,

Stained and threadbare,

Threatening to rend

At the most delicate touch

As rain comes down

On hills and weaving coconut palms

Marble monuments, their treasures plundered.

And the sun-shielded glass
In a city a thousand kilometres away

Reeking of human enslavement

Nomenclature-ed

Numbered

Synergised

Compartmentalised

Ergonomised

Promoted

Demoted

Transferred

Filed

Forgotten.

The rain stops

11.30 a.m.

Just as the pounding in the brain

Ceases.

Make tea

Drink cupful of heat

Satiation

Lay down to rest

Sleep the tired sleep of the lazy

Wake worn out to rain pounding again

Rivulets on glass

Head aching from countless

Confusing dreams.

IV

When we go to fetch his body
From the morgue

The rain comes so thick

That the river Pampa changes course

Marooning the house

He built

Our abode

Of parsimonious money

He made from the pain of my hunger

The house of our deprivation.

As the flotsam recedes

Leaving the ground slushy

In the 1.30 p.m. rain

He is interred
At the family church

At the family graveyard
When the bell tolls mournfully

After the priests and assemblage

Chants

Prays

Sings

Mumbles
Weeps

Dropping mud on his coffin.

He must have heard

The thudding
Soil and stone

Rain

On palm trees

The wind sighing in leaves

The susurration

Of tiny rivulets

Into his new abode.

Felt the wasting

Of a body

Dissipated

Drowned in grief
Alone
Soil to Soil
Earth to Earth
Dreams having flown
In the 4.30 p.m. rain.