In my dreams, only in my dreams,
You are the Gwalior Monument
Brick and mortar, Rajasthan marble, piled high.
You are indulgent. You kept your promise.
I began to write a poem about you
      and ended up with a noble toy
But this is not the age for toys or for dawdling days away,
Nor for, like Rabindranath, being carried away
In a stream of Ganga hymns. Both
My good times, my bad times, are fleeting.
How long are rail bridges? Like them
I am a tiny bit of lament.
Not the Brooklyn Bridge
      of American poet Hart Crane.
At meetings they say you are my rhyme for a train¹.
You though know all.
   Not for us to match or join one another.
You are drifting on a gondola in a distant shade.
In my dreams, only in my dreams, you are the Gwalior monument
Firmly entwined, Gwalior monument, brick and mortar,
Rajasthan marble, piled high.
You are indulgent. You kept your promise.

The glimpse of a lass
    the day the first flowers bloomed–
Crossing over the lanes and by lanes of that disarray
I reached the stairs to you, to poetry.
Incredible solitary steps - that never reach the palace
Only steps, lonely incredible solitary steps–
     and the Communist manifesto
Goodness! What nonsense I spew, like a madman!
My job is to write poetry
The stairs are the mason's job,
As is the yellow house. Mine is poetry.
In my dreams, only in my dreams, you are the Gwalior monument
Brick and mortar, Rajasthan marble, piled high.
You are indulgent. You kept your promise.
Head on my hands, thighs brimming with kapaas bolls
But how do I put scattered peanut shells in my poem?
In air-conditioned spaces too, shells are disallowed.
Also kissing. Tobacco leaves legally banned. Oh shoot!
More words I gather for my poems, farther they scatter,
Like wishes and dreams– yours and mine.
There’s no breeze,
The leaves of the Jatropha tree are still. Yet
Tidal waters spread, keep spreading.


[1] Allusion to the poem 'Mome porlo', where the poet remembers his beloved when a train whistle blows at a railway crossing and he wonders if she is still reading Hart Crane.