Breasts/Mulaigal
(For Kutti Revathi)
He smuggles it out the theatre
and into pathology,
the small man,
heedless of that which is in his hands,
still warm with blood,
and pleading, for a last minute reprieve.
I think: what if he is a cannibal, what if.
I picture him licking his lips after lunch,
his hands on his swollen belly.
Mulaigal, I think,
the Tamil coming to me unbidden.
Orange slosh of Adriamycin,
teeth on stand-by carrying traces
of daily gritting and forbidden sugar-love,
that slow switch to crumpledness,
and nurses with breasts
who come and go,
and she talking of Kannagi, of Otta Mulachi,
and me thinking of that which is in his hands,
still warm with blood,
pleading, pleading,
and the night’s dark ceiling
sprouting a million missing breasts.
A Woman of Letters
Some days what I want to be is a woman of letters,
to retire to my study and be
solitary.
I can see it all:
that desk – neat, rectangular, coffee brown,
its drawers seductive and deep,
holding secrets from another age,
on it some paper, a pen and an ink well,
and a bookcase filled with every kind of book –
Austen definitely and Dickinson and Chugthtai…
No adolescent daughters abandoning dresses in contemptuous heaps.
No grubby sons, their dirty socks like bombs under my books.
No spouses, no mothers, nor mothers-in-law
with their urgent thoughts.
Sometimes all I want to be is a woman of letters.
Between chores, the very idea makes me weep.
Sita
“I am not gone yet,” she whispers to the boys as they sleep,
“and even though it looks as though I walked out on it all,
and even though it’s what I wanted most at the time –
to return to the earth,
to leave it all behind in a grand gesture,
I find I have been outwitted after all,
for the going away is easy but the leaving behind isn’t.
This keeping vigil has become a habit impossible to kick,
and you, my boys, are my very heart.
Tell your father
I am neither golden image nor ghost,
I am that mother’s face which looks
back at him from all the palace mirrors,
flame-scarred and bright.
