At The Edge Of The World Poem by Shanta Acharya

(After Anish Kapoor's ‘creations' at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1998)


The queue outside stretches
like an alley cat, waiting
to enter the crowded gallery,
explore the plugged-holes at the centre
of walls and ceilings. Not enough time
or space for all to experience ways of defining
It-of lending shape, colour, sound, meaning.

Once inside, the world is turned upside down,
inside out, disoriented with double mirrors,
emptied of space funnelling into arupa,
untitled, leaving us newly-born, fearful of oblivion.

In the beginning (or is it the end?)
securing a discrete position
I get sucked into my mother's womb
peering at deep dark shrines of
my body, her body; our bodies
moving in rhythm to creations
at the vortex, doubly-inverted images,
when I become pregnant, making the world many.

We exchange according to our measure
the open-endedness of things, configuring
a nose, a breast, a man posing in his briefs?
Or something new waiting to be seen.

Imagination turns earth and stone into sky.
In the dark, polished hollow of a marble mummy
a fleeting spirit appears. A twisting column of light,
I flicker before giving up the ghost.