Three Poems by Omair Bhat

A Travelogue

Dusk. And the noise: unemphatic. Sky,
Embers. I embark on an empty train
On way to nowhere. A nameless moor.

Two birds flit hither and thither
In the window in search
For something we can no longer
Call by name.

Stilled in time, scuffing against
The pane, the paws struggle
To break through into a movement

To contain it, to occupy it to groove it
To a tether until the final halt
Arrives : empty without the lurch
Or a leap. A mere inert shrug, like this.

But the birds. They have vanished
By now . The skies are, in the instant,
Incommunicable, whispering to the dead.

I am making peace with what is left.
Nothing, now. Nothing. Another
Impasse, perhaps. Another,
another wobble.

2

( Throes )

I break loose. I come apart.
I art a stare like an err.
I look blank in despair.
I snow. I slush. I slob.
( And then, and then )
I root in grief. I grate reeds.
I repair faith. I faint
Recollecting wrong
Hour. I scour scattered
Seeds for some sense.
I excess sin. I besiege light.
I flight, I flint, I falter
Barely, barely before
The cold bitter death
Makes a move on me.

3

TV News

With news on TV comes
A crackle and familiar creaking

On the door that turns
On its pivot tumbling

Into a fearful frenzy
Falling, stumbling

Before the feet arrive, epauletted,
A mob in hordes hustling

Across and about moving
Into the house hurrying

Summer’s scorch, hell
Riling a protest, climbing

On the windows and turrets crippling
Leftovers of spaces planting

Scopes looking
Downward adjusting

A wind parted metal snout
On a street where people running

For covers in the morning rain
Are unaware that they are passing

Through this thick ambush by rows
Of mortal weariness filling

In for the minimal freedom to walk, talk
Or look beneath the surface, missing

Freedom to turn on the TV and find
The news now replaced by soothsaying

Or something not this unrelenting clamour
For a manslaughter on the scaffolding

A new pain sawn into an old wound
On a broken patchwork of remembering

No prayer or memory can mend
With or without the rattle of sighing

Until the TV is shut off and we go
Back to our perennial grieving

*