Endling

‘and our little life rounded by a sleep.’

— William Shakespeare

George, you carried your shell – like all of us –
A bag on your back
To pack your fears, life’s Rosy Wolves.

As you oozed backward to the end from the far edge
Of the Big Bang, your one foot the pillar on which
You laid your body like a bridge,
And slowly circled the terrarium,
Darwin must wonder what was your crime.

The stars smelt in their bloomery.
The fire from the elements forged your mouth, anus, eye;
Threw in the complete set, the penis and the vagina,
Turned you hermaphrodite, god knows why.

As the last night fell, you were still looking,
Under grass and stone, for a mate,
In perpetuation of the line –
The future: the leftovers from a date.

If you were your cousin, Aspersa, you might have been farmed,
Fasted with water, salted, cooked: escargot served
From the cauldron of a kitchen’s hell
To merry gangs that relish flesh, but behave well.

But you were spared that fate.
You were designed to be devoid of purpose,
A hedonist bound in a hermit’s shell.
What’s a snail’s fury, asked Thom Gunn.
It’s the little man at war with the tyranny of his limitations
And, beaten, crawling back to the sun.

Garden

The courtyard the colour of honey held against the sun.
Chimney smoke running in currents over the ground.
Voices in the garden fading in the same one-way wind.
You turn away, insubstantial as those who left, outward bound.

Lazarus

‘The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.’

— John 11:44

Risen to make man believe in miracles, Lazarus was
Lost to Mary and Martha, and made his way to Kition
To his second life, adept at nothing and dull as before.
Denied water once on the road, he broke his silence
Briefly with a curse, and a vineyard reddening the sky paled
And whitened, like the tardy farmer’s face,
Into a marsh of salt. Another time, as perhaps becomes one
Chosen to be twice dead but the same in both lives,
He said of a thief stealing away with a vase: “Clay steals clay,”
As if one had to be born again to be so ironic, so wise.

Lazarus lapsed into reign as the governor of Kition,
Laid himself down when thirty years were done. No one wept.
From noon to three, the day stayed bright; it was not the End.
Was it worth, the going below, and the coming up for breath,
The sleep-walking through the long vacancy of purpose
–As if he was occupying another’s space – just like those of us
Who serve a sentence both in effect and suspended?

The dead return dazed, heavy, dull as funeral bells.
There is life after death. We live it forgetful of our former selves.

Flight

We depart in sleep, thinking of what we left behind,
Shuffle past men in uniform and mask who ask who we are.
We enter through clouds and dreams into another place,
Half awake, smile at strangers, wearing another face.

Arrival, Victoria Terminus, Bombay

The terminus awaits the queen with each train, yet.
Across the road, the old post box, accusatory, as if I owed a debt.
I think of the letter you said you posted, long after we fought.
Twenty years late, expectant, I arrive on the hour at the spot.

Excerpted with permission from Window With A Train Attached: New And Selected Poems, CP Surendran, Speaking Tiger Books.

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