Bridging the Gap
 
He is known as the Lord of Five Rivers,
in the town of saints and temples,
 melodious as the bells
tied around the necks
 of tired cattle making their way home.
Will he sing again in our town,
 the Lord with the bouncing gait
At Thiruvaiyaaru?
 
Standing on the bridge
on the last of the five rivers,
the Cauvery is a tunnel of oily black
flowing East against the setting Sun.
No boatman’s song, no final call
only the smell of piss and diesel
as dark drunken men lurch against the parapet
unfurl their lungies, arc their stinking urine
into the river
At Thiruvaiyaaru.
 
The Summer Palace is in ruins.
The Maratha Princes weep and gibber
from leprous walls made bright by strobe lights
strung with oil lamps. Snake stones coil and uncoil
in their carnal embrace near ancient roots as bats
fly blindly into the light, mouths open
blood red, marked with tiny teeth.
 
Like the singer who calls to us from her silken bed,
Seductive, playful, teasing out tales of love
and lust that fill the hungry stones that have only
eaten bird droppings, goat shit, lizards tongues.
A lecherous lemon tree grabs me in its thorny claws
stabs the living flesh that bleeds afresh with acid
memories that no amount of plaster or paint can erase.
 
The Lord of the Five Rivers has risen
like the moon bouncing against the parapet walls
Will he dance again, will he sing?
At Thiruvaiyaaru?