Gagan Gill

A desire is in the girl's bangles:
first they will break on his bed
then on the threshold of his house.
...

Here:
in her bones
she hides herself
...

No water
only sky
fills this fish's brain.
...

Just a little hope is needed

like a ray of sun
shining in the earth
...

Eyelashes will shed
in her desire to see you
...

Child, go home.
Your home is nowhere?
Then go back to the womb.
...

Only for a day
she will not think
about you
...

When it arrives on your doorstep, the first thing every love
asks is: can you jump from the window for me? Can you stab
...

The ants had lost their way home.

They walked, making lines between our sleep and our bodies.
Their invisible flour stays scattered in their memory, scattered
by some other place and time. They kept going from one end
...

This is the first night

Dry flour is scattered
...

The first night:

flour
is spilt
on the floor
...

In this place
her last sigh is thirsty
...

You will say night
and night will be
...

Very early one morning she touches him
on an unknown planet
in the seventh heaven of the senses
in the strange light of desire.

She touches him
like a heavy cloud
like the stalled wind
like holy fire

She touches him as though
He is God on the sixth day of Creation
who must pass through her
and destroy her
to recreate her.

Very early one morning she touches
the Mayavi, the elusive one
like magical waters
and chooses for herself
the death

of a fish.
...

I won't come and tell you

that these days I'm a star
lonely as stars

I won't come and tell you

that these days
there is broken glass
in my breath

that gods pass
one by one
inside me
to revive an ancient ache

that these days
my soul is sitting hidden
inside the flesh
like a dislocated bone.

that the sparrows
that used to fly
within me
have begun to tire

that there was nothing there for them to sit on
no tree, no cage, no rooftop.

that the nail
that used to poke through
has grown larger
than the heel.
...

Just for a day

She won't think
of you

And the fish will forget
Their way about water

The sun will be suspended
Burning helpless in the orbit

The umbilical chord will coil and strangle
Time's own neck

Just for a day

She, oblivious
will place her lamp
between the sun and the moon


And the seven sages in the sky
Will get worried

Letters will fly away
Falling off the scripts

Creatures will forget their faces
And no mirrors will be there

Just for a day

You will go
Into an ethereal mist
For a moment

And darkness will befall
The whole of universe

Lava will gather
In the guts of earth

For miles
snails will burn
inside their shells


In just a day's
oblivion

her body will turn blue
from its own bite
...

She will desire him like sin
She will desire him like virtue
In some unknown place
In an unknown room
She will make love to him in her thoughts

As though, uninvited,
for no reason, she has gone there
walking in her sleep
As though for centuries she's been sitting
At that place within herself
Where nightmares lie in wait
For desires to go mad

She will desire him
Like a kind of dream
That, only with open eyes
She has always seen
As though he were a shoulder
For some barren cry

As though loving were a curse
Were an endless wailing
Or an incoherent monologue
She will desire him

As though he
Were some incurable disease
As though he were
Something to be lifted
Like a sorcerer's curse

She will desire him
Like Sin
Like virtue
And come back in her body

Like a hidden wound.
...

In her lovemaking, she grieves
In her grief, she makes love

In her lovemaking, she gives him a name
The one she gives the name is illusion
Maya, whose desire moves through her sleep

She knows, in the end
Whatever name she calls him by
Each name will only be an empty space.

Making love, she thinks
She is safe in her oblivion
In her longing, in her selfishness
She doesn't remember that
The one she desires
Is just one fistful of bones.
Bones that come out of the crematorium
In just five minutes

Making love, she breathes
In his flesh, his marrow, his soul

Somewhere around here was his soul
Would she find it
In these fistful of bones?

Each time in her fear
She holds him tightly to her
Each time he slips out from her arms

In her lovemaking
In her grief
...

The ants had lost their way home.

They walked, making lines between our sleep and our bodies.
Their invisible flour stays scattered in their memory, scattered
by some other place and time. They kept going from one end
of the earth to the other in search of it. They sank their teeth
in every living and dead thing. The sorrows of the earth grew
so light with their journeying that directions began to spin in
confusion. The poles began to change places. But nobody
knew the ants' sorrow.

Long ago, perhaps they were women.
...

A desire is in the girl's bangles:
first they will break on his bed
then on the threshold of his house.
But why on the threshold?
Because in the girl there is a woman
mourning — who is not yet
a widow
but a widow to be.
The girl's fear throbs in her veins
as far as her bangles
The girl's desire throbs in them
The girl's mourning throbs in them
Mourning?
Where is the girl's man
for whom mourning runs in her veins
for whom desire is in her bangles?
Her man is caught
in some other body
some other dream
sorrow, other tears
His every sorrow, dream, tear
is beyond the reach of the mourning girl…
But the girl is only a girl
in her is that primal innocence,
madness, death,
whose punishment
she will give to that man
one day
when she will break her bangles…
...