When He comes
Out of the blue
A meteorite
Shattering your home
Be sure
God is visiting you.
~ Tukaram (trans. Dilip Chitre)
You thought you asked for peace,
thought there would be time
to contemplate
a modular kitchen,
a beloved’s eyes over a glass of rosé,
a world spinning gracefully out of orbit
outside a soundproof window.
You never expected this architecture
of thinning girder,
collapsing
beam,
this glass elevator
plummeting
past picnicking families,
Pomeranians in suburban gardens,
sturdy investment bankers,
vaporizing faces,
names losing their voltage —
this scaffold of air.
You didn’t smell the danger,
never picked up the clues.
Outside, the view blurs —
sun-baked pyramid to pagoda,
river valley to moraine —
and the devourer of form,
once a genteel termite,
now at your jugular, foaming,
inflamed
by bloodlust, almost
familiar.
So this is what you summoned
those nights
when the universe seemed not to listen,
not peace,
but this carnival
of unmooring,
forever and always
seismic,
this catamaran love.
~ Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet, curator, editor and writer on arts and spirituality. She has published three books of poetry, most recently ‘Where I Live: New and Selected Poems’ (Bloodaxe, UK, 2009). As editor, her works include ‘Another Way’ (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2013), an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry in English.