The Stone Age

Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind,

Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment,

Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite

Dove, you build round me a shabby room,

And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while

You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep,

You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And

Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink

Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood,

Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities.

When you leave, I drive my blue battered car

Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty

Noisy steps to knock at another's door.

Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch,

they watch me come

And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me

What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,

A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake

Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like

A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,

And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is

Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price....

[From The Old Playhouse and Other Poems]


Kamala Das