Tonight we cast our nets
In foreign waters
Now we are new
Tomorrow we’ll belong
Then the sea'll tug and pull
Time to be gone
So, let’s
Kiss the nymphs
Meet the crabs
In their bucket games
Feel their stabs
Our plans are small
But they are spread
A thousand ports
Before we are dead
Image: Sailing off Gloucester (ca.1880) by Winslow Homer.
write
to distill
life’s brine
into Morse code.
we dot
the night –
constellations
to navigate by
Desert guitars breathe dusk’s low tone, dissolving the sun;
Footsteps of light retreat alone, dissolving the sun.
Victories fade like prayers on wind-worn stone, dissolving the sun;
Sorrows sleep deep in caverns unknown, dissolving the sun.
Love gilds the cactus—an amber throne, dissolving the sun;
Hatred grinds silence to marrow and bone, dissolving the sun.
Hope drifts north with oud smoke blown, dissolving the sun;
Despair sits south, unmoved and prone, dissolving the sun.
Time loosens strings on an old dial-tone, dissolving the sun;
Night tunes the dust to a heart on loan, dissolving the sun.
G, your whisper returns full-grown—melded as one, dissolving the sun;
All journeys end where they’d begun, forever dissolving the sun.
The above is (approximately) in the ghazal form. I’ve been reading history of the al-Andalus, listening to Darrymple’s podcast, and reflecting it all back to India’s recent history while reading Shadows at Noon.
I.
Unruly, unmoored
A tempest of questions
In the car seat swrils
II.
The car seat is full
Of a tidal wave
Of question marks
III.
A flood of questions
Pool in the car seat
Doubting the universe
IV.
Between the tides of questions
The car seat is both
Raft and the sea
V.
Asleep
The cauldron of the car seat
Brews
Questions
Thank you, Olivia Dean — Dive
We've been around since dawn And our day is yet long We were lucky To have Orcas In the afternoon
Before our huts Of fire, steel, and stone This Earth strode alone Palaces Of light, blood, and bone
Ever changing, yet ever same Characters with shared masks But a different name
At the tips of pyramids, The giants dance. Even as we steal the bricks, For a second Of prosperity's glance
Our murderers are microscopic, They train their harpoon. We were lucky To have Orcas In the afternoon
She is the hot-headed matchstick
Aneesh Sathe 