Monsoon Poem with Prose Postscript
in draining light.
One could imagine Purgatory--
a vast shanty town--
set ablaze, smoke
becoming ink-black clouds,
setting the mood
for monsoon's advent.
Find yourself a bamboo hut--
mud floor, tin roof--
and wait as moist air wraps
you like a winding sheet.
It comes:
a drop
on the tin roof--
C sharp!
And more,
beating a tattoo,
pounding dust
to release roar;
it seems the ground beneath
might dissolve
like sugar cubes in tea.
Buddha says: Everything is transient; clutch at nothing--and his disciples holed up in monasteries to meditate on his teaching till the rains let up. I would like to meditate too but I have to go to a party--where the inane chatter on the monsoon's beauty--unique to our land--and Rabindranath Tagore's divine lyrics on the theme is enough to drive me nuts. My monsoon thoughts are now of noxious gutters swelling into a deluge, carrying away the detritus of all our days.
Truth on the Prowl
Browsing through Vedantic verdure
He reads: The Truth is one
And indivisible....
It lulls him to sleep.
He dreams:
Truth is single
And lonely:
On the prowl.
But everyone keeps away.
Truth goes to Singles Bars
But no one's interested--
Neither men nor women,
Straight, gay, lesbian, bi.
Finally Truth meets Falsity,
Fixes a date--
and is stood up.
Truth looks into a mirror,
Touches itself--
nothing happens.
Truth sits alone
Drinking, lugubriously
Watches men and women
Busy at their pleasures.
Kaiser Huq teaches English at Dhaka University.
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