The Haunts Poem by Jeet Thayil

As starlight, as ash or rain,
as a smear on the moon,

as a tree, say a champakali,

as a leaf or a man impersonating a leaf
torn into shreds
and fed to the wind,

as the smell of a small dead animal,

as a tremble on the stair,
a mouse or air,
a tear, a heave,

as fear glimpsed from the window of a plane,

as a telepathic ginger cat
that appears in a slit of moonlight
enters the locked house
and leaves its stinking spoor in each locked room,

as a boat on the Muhatupuzha about to drop
its load of two children and a woman
into the monsoon current,
and if the river had taken them
how much pain would it have made,
how much would it have saved?

as my mother trying to push the monstrous head out from between her legs,

as the stalker at 4 AM
swing creaking in the park near my house
downturned face white in cellphone light,

as the god that swaggers the top floor of my spirit
or the ghost that twists in the basement
or the slave that inhabits the middle,

as an inconsolable soprano nearing the end of Ave Maria,

as a cherry red Stratocaster Elite
found in a pawn shop in Vancouver
and bargained down to eight hundred dollars,

as bad heroin in a Delhi alley
pink pill crushed up and sold in a twist of paper
snorted hungrily for no pleasure,

as a woman (again and again)
whose hair curls, mouth moves or eyes well like yours,

as a figure by the side of the Expressway
urging me to crash the car
in a voice so calm and wise
it took every shred of sanity not to give in,

as good heroin in Zurich,

as a bloated white face on the ceiling of a borrowed room
talking to me all night
in words I am too high to understand,

as a violin creeping through the
trees in front of Humboldt University
and I understood music as the hunger
that eats those it stokes,

as the careful lizard that patrols my brain,

as the dazzled bird who steals—gems, junk,
whatever comes - to build
and what did I build but a house of dust?

as a ritual between newlywed insects
as an insect, horned shivering convulsed
tiny tyrannosaurus throes,

as the white of my beard, whiteness beyond snow or stupor,

as the abandoned child you were
who said goodbye to wind and water
stepped into the opposite of air
said no to earth-blood

said stop to body-blood
arrived as white shadow
without features or desire
as a drop of sacrificial oil

made your atoms integrate
tumbling dripping under
in your hurry to enter
the kingdom of eternal life,

as illness, as liver disease
and the river of red wine that cures it,

as the black grape that made the wine,

as a black burn on the leg that appears overnight and stays for years,
as an unexplainable lump on the shoulder,

as the sound of someone close crying softly in the night,

as a dead girl with blood-red lips
blood-red eyes and cheeks
blood-red wrung neck,

as crematorium smell of
camphor and meat,

as whatever you want,

just come back.