Kamala Das Poems

It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling
Jingling... Beneath the fiery gulmohur, with
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Today the world is a little more my own.
No need to remember the pain
A blue-frocked woman caused, throwing
Words at me like pots and pans, to drain
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Your body is my prison, Krishna,
I cannot see beyond it.
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How can my love hold him when the other
Flaunts a gaudy lust and is lioness
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It smelt of new rains and of tender
Shoots of plants- and its warmth was the warmth
Of earth groping for roots… even my
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We left that old ungainly house
When my dog died there, after
The burial, after the rose
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Of late I have begun to feel a hunger
To take in with greed, like a forest fire that
Consumes and with each killing gains a wilder,
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At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna
Loved her for the last time and left...
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They did this to her, the men who know her, the man
She loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish
And a coward, the husband who neither loved nor
Used her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band
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The night, dark-cloaked like a procuress, brought
him to me, willing, light as a shadow,
speaking words of love
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