Night Shift Poems

Rapt

In the secret cell of night,
in lone industry, rapt
in the work of a holy wait,

sometimes
a godly engine
             awakens

to turn the crankshaft
of its own iron wheel.
             And I yield

to this strange machine
as it fills up the room
with a numinous heat,

quieting the strenuous
scrawl of hand,
the restless jig of limb.

I find the self gathering
in a monkish equipoise,
               entering

the field of a larger vision,
feeling the globose disc
of my gaze

               pulling down
into the magnetic whorl
of a primal heft.

And under the far-seeing lens
      of this centred eye,
   something

starts to quake           shift –
forms unthaw as if roused ripe
            from a pupal sleep,

and at the border of my sight,
I begin to glimpse
the outlines of aerial bodies –

             buoyant,
colourful,
                   alive,

already hammered in the bright heat
of some forge, already burnished
and glazed by a superior alembic,

quick forms
riding on the pellucid skin
of black air.

A creation both rapturous & light,
rhythm shaped from the lung of kinesis,
pound of tiny-hearts beat-beating.

Deep in the cochlear shell of my being,
I hear a swift surge, a chorus,
          a noisy uprush,  

a musculature of wings
              oaring
in turns of

upstroke
     then
        downstroke,

cleaving the soar of wind.
    O aslant cavalries!
See them arrive,

                        the birds,
the birds
            flapping spontaneously.

Born from an inner flight but more
the clear toil of some other eye,
image crossing the imaginarium of night,

look, how they rise,
fully-formed feathered-beasts
      erupting free,

         winged augurs of dawn –
                small   airborne
                              alchemies.

Nocturne

It’s late here by the weather-house up on Kudan Street.
All day a thick rain has fallen on the ground.

A low, persistent rain where water abrades rock,
and the skies blot with a spill of grey,

an excess of greywater, so damp and aqueous
you can dip your finger in like in a vat of diluted ink.

And yet, something remains. A few splotches
of light glimmer in this wash of a stony rain.

Lamps and tubes of fire dangle from
the busy hands of men wading through water,

like human skiffs or ghostly apparitions
rushing their way to and fro a wet limbo.

For the man who is crouched, arms
straining to pull a rickshaw uphill, heavy

with the weight of some nobleman,
the small ignition of an orange flame isn’t enough.

He bends and fishes for the lucent hat of moon
and crowns himself with it.  

Let it get wet in the rain at Kudan Hill!
I hear him sulk. A whispery sulk.

But from the figure in the yukata with their back
turned to my face, I hear just a plash.

I’m not allowed knowledge, only a spectral zag.
A forward, unhurried gait. In their hands

the bamboo weight of a strong wagasa, its pupil
shining in the dimmed glow of the lighthouse.

Whether they are heading home
or some other place

only the rain isn’t forbidden
to ask.

Invocation

Someone’s turned down the white blaze
of a paraffin lamp. Black smut is smudged
over yellow boxes of light. Hushed,
the impulse to chatter and bray. It has come.
The hour of slow loris. Thrush, rat, night heron.
The hour of bat excrement. The gift of guano.
Fertile mineral-rich gift dropped in a lake.
Deep wells of ore. Nitrogenous rock cave.
Erect forms have turned foetal, embryonic again.
And the waters shine silver with the sleep
of a million sardines. It is time.
Awake, cricket. Awake, cereus. Bear and
honey badger, awake. Mark the air
with your solitary cry, o wolf, hyena,
purple frog. It is your hour. To you it belongs,
all of earth, the dark, luscious sap of plants,
the moonlit wriggle of worms, tall shadows
of pine, fig, acacias, khejri, the hollong.
Palm civets, come out. Out of the cover
of cement-drains, out of the tubs lined with
mucus, out of your scared, arboreal stupor.
No more the tedious hum of radiators.
No more the loud earth-masters quarrying rock,
soil, stone. It is yours, the mulch, the ooze,
the cool and silent tomb of the underground.
Returned to you for the night, the dark ball of earth.
Play with it, o fishing cat. Have your fill
of shimmering koi from unmanned office ponds.
Awake, tuberoses. Awake, drowsy pods
of mogra. Sweet shiuli, awake. Scent
all orifices with your nightly bouquet.

The poems are narrated on audio by Annalisa Mansukhani. Recorded on 7 July 2022, New Delhi.