Love it could be that sits on the slippery step of the ghat. It’s some unfamiliar animal that one’s reminded of, looking at it.

              It could be a dream. Inside the temple, in place of pillars, there are female posteriors. Ashes of jealousy are showering down. “There’s still time, there’s still time.” An old woman is speaking into the sandy grass. “The wrinkles will be wiped away; there’s still time, my child.”

              Foreheads are about to split open. Souls are adrift cracking through domes of glass. A luminous body is scrubbing her heel in a wave. A man, slight as straw, sits next to a mound of marigolds. Moist eye. He says, “Is there nothing to me at all?”

              To his left, between someone’s breasts, a seven-coloured stone, pulsing, fashioning its own sunlight.

              At ten-o’clock in the morning, in the river, water is like readymade tea. A Japanese dancer, in slow motion, dances out his T’ai Chi, raising his flute to the pyre.

              Someone will soon be here
              to shatter the make-believe.
              Someone will soon be here.