Prem ["Love"]

In Delhi a woman wears men’s perfume,

a chocolate oak growing geodesic leaves

that twine like dust particles in spotlight.

•

A city drenched yellow by traces of gravity,

there's no way out and it feels better in

the glitter of darkness. Wind-navy wishes.

•

They say she walks like a man or some

other thing in between, a left leg stomp

leaves a dust cloud as from royal rhinos.

•

They bathe in great numbers in the storm,

thick, wet miracles. No manuals to follow,

only the duty to breathe, invent freedoms.

•

Mathematics flashes its perfect teeth from

her unadorned lips, her happy algebraic

bites as she proceeds down clogged roads.

•

She looks out for signs from the celestial

council of bodies that decide destinations

of falling hearts. She carries hers close,

•

and those she has caught that float about,

curious and mute except for half-eclipsed

hums that still cast spells of compassion.

•

She forgets the oratory of the preacher,

as she forgets the chords on her guitar –

performs for you an improvised remix.

•

Her fingers dance on the merriest calculus

and her voice recalls the causes of infinity

and reminds you of the history of thought.

•

It’s so much more a thing of full colour.

Her deep songs shove you easily awake

from a long magic night, unremembered.