Kashi
In this city where god
sprouts from every stone
I ask you to choose
between light and bone
both bare
without beginning and end
I choose water
its stillness and turbulence
its capacity to hone
both light and bone
into salvation
and sin
In heat that merrily tears
our newspaper skins
into flying streams of script
I seek an abandoned god
to wake him from rock
with stolen prayer
In a city of prayers
I have landed without one
heaving bosom empty heart
When I stand in queue and arrive
I have nothing to ask
I let my eyes speak in darshan
Outside I rattle myself
to know what I want
If I pounded my heart
with this pestle of god
would it be found?
I suddenly wish I were god
I want to wear this city like bark
to peel it nail-scratch by nail-scratch
my city of failed dreams
where god remembers to answer
only many years after
I have called