Dialogue
in four parts, between Ivan in Zagreb and Sampurna in Bombay

i.
Is not writing essentially a practice that is contrary to sense?

And so it is,
windfall and vagabond,
a madness of sound
that taunts the silence to echo it.
And silence, contrary to sense, stays true.
What are words to do but
tear the tissue, force the vacuum,
exact the blood of speech?
It is a difficult birth,
this breached baby,
it is labour, and on a good day,
it is love.

ii.
…all these seem to betray the elegant reticence of the ordinary…

In a world where cults can believe that humans were put on earth by aliens, where diseased cells can be made to blink like radioactive stars in a body of teeming circuits, where a two-headed albino snake can be auctioned for millions of dollars, where parrots can give away lovers and a woman can marry a dolphin, how extraordinary the ordinary must seem, how marvellous the shine of tears on a cheek that I can lean forward and wipe away
without a word.

iii.
…hanging on the brink of the spacious night in which every accidental streak is a residue of our belief in the value of the things around us…

Space is accidental.
Hope meteoric; weakness, residue.
Never think about scale
if you want to survive, uncrushed.

iv.
Wishing you many effortless endings.

Is there, can there be, such a thing?
I am thinking of the pang of the last page, returning me to reality,
the last wish on the deathbed, the last look before turning the corner.
I am thinking of the many meanings of ‘last’.
The previous the final the forever.

If Irony Were Possible
After seeing Kurosawa’s ‘The Idiot’

The idiot sees through me at once.
Once a wall, now branching into a tree,
I rake dry twigs against closed panes.

The idiot sees my cunning.
If I were a fall of snow from the roof,
I would be easier to escape.

If I were a spot of sun.

The idiot sees the magnetic pull of knives.
The exact shade of the tears
a fallen woman might drop.

The idiot is clairvoyant.
Out of a scrap of paper, the shapes of bodies rise.
He sees their bones.

Under their clothes, their bones.

Peeling past fabric into the cloth of tissue
and cell, the idiot makes the genius incision.
A spurt of love is enough.

The idiot is happy with little.

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