Canticle

This city's neon-crafted eucalyptus branches
are spears in the sparrow's eyes. A walled
villa whose mistress can't remember

anything other than her own childhood,
a highrise-sized fiberglass sunflower
adorns its manicured garden, the petals

cupping into a plastic-hole for the sparrow
to nestle. To be born with a city
on my eyelids-- a necessary training

to stare at everything through the veil
of a hole-ridden thousand rupee bill.
Yet, I cannot make up my mind

about where to look. The never-ending
silence of this city's cacophony: I
am learning to memorize

the name of each one of its corners
without recourse to the explanations
in your cheekbones. The unbroken

silence of the train piercing
through the mountains – you
are a sledgehammer inside my spleen

that keeps alive this recitation of caveats
you yourself found difficult to obey.
Do not lean too closely on the lamp-post.

I learnt to recognize the safety of illiteracy
by putting the hunger's sounds
on my open eyelids. The relentless

silence of the crows cawing-- behind
every misrecognition that guided me
towards these graffitis is a desire

to peer out into the subterranean
constellation that emptiness promises.
That the dawn of this city

remains hollowed out of birds
other than crows, sparrows and common
mynahs. The irrestible pull

of the clockhand that chisels itself
from the blister in between you toes
is nothing but a gateway

to a palm full of callouses: inescapable.
That precise twilight when every
bruise ever incurred assumes

the shape of alphabets I cannot
read. This urge that is safe
only on the tip of my tongue

is the precursor to this illegible
unforgiving – the effort to gather
the scattered glass shards

through a chronicling of your touch.
Against your cupping fingers, the sparrow
is dead. It is when you burrow

into the hollows of the fiberglass
petals to give death a shape, I know
the sound of you gasping is also the thud

of a city burying itself in a billowing
book. On your open palm, the sparrow
with its beak slightly open. Otherwise,

unhurt: unsullied. An instance of how
plastic makes asphyxiation collectible.
Your questions are closing in, my

ultimate promise: I will always sleep
with my door open. A feather-cloud
on your lips, and we both know,

with or without touching each other,
this city is not meant to be housed
in second-hand bookstores.

​