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Manohar Shetty - Poems
Gifts - Moving Out - Personal Effects -Exotica - Peacock - Domestic Creatures - Stills from Baga Beach - The Old Printer - Recipe - Jackfruit -
The Hyenas - Fireflies - The Rat - Mannequin - Dialogue with a Child - Jigsaw
The Hyenas
My asthmatic child coughs—her throat
Is emery paper. Her tiny
Hands are wet
Petals in my hand. Hyenas cackle
From the Governor’s banquet grounds.
Eyes glint as a fencer’s
Mask, I stare them down. I whisper,
They’ve gone, dearest child, sleep;
They laugh with the Governor’s gang
Of kingmakers, fatcats, gold-toting ogres.
She sleeps, her temples damp.
To the carrion call the drooling
Packs converge: amidst red
Laughter, claws tear
At gizzard, sweating pigling,
Roe, soft brain, and lamb.
Fireflies
Outside, they were flashing streamers.
But straying indoors like wavering lanterns
Into widening shadows thrown by excited
Nets of caps and blazers, we caged them
In grass-crammed bottles, the tops
Punctured for air, and watched them
Stare like luminous dials.
I had imagined burning crystals
Or tips of emerald embers,
But found a softer substance—
Soon dimming—the insects, worried
By coarse hands, the walls of glass
Baffling their tiny wings,
Wilted to lifeless specks.
I had felt nothing then,
Only a small pang for the loss
Of a schoolboy’s ornament. But now,
Travelling my daily groove
In the hunt for food and habitat,
I remember their trapped blank lights.
The Rat
For ever
on red alert, it discovered
Fresh dugouts in
the flat and left
Its imprint everywhere: bitten
Lentil
jars, the holes like smears,
Even the soap as if
scraped
By a grater and the ruts in fruit
Raked
through; the furtive rustle
In the attic and in the
shoe-rack
Something breathing.
Even
the wooden trap it ate through.
The jagged escape
route
I swore at in disbelief, but felt
Curiously
relieved; not for me
The pangs of the executioner
Of
a methodical frenzied prisoner
Sawing through the
night.
Then, the
alluring odour of poison
Dabbed on crust and meat
Concealed
craftily, it sniffed past
Imperiously; and again
that twinge
Of relief as when the neighbour’s cat,
Flung
into the hunt, pawed, spat
At the cupboard, then
sidled out,
Tail curled haughtily.
Only
once did I bang the bin,
Rattle the chairs, make a show.
It
hid through the din and nosed
Out in the silence.
But
one night the noises ceased.
And every night since
then. Suddenly.
As if it had risen
From
some dark underworld
To conduct a grave test
And
had left, satisfied
I’d emerged second best.
Mannequin
Bathed
so long in this rich ring of light
I can now discern a
recurring face
In those scudding hordes. I watch his
Worried
brow, the perpetual briefcase
Weary with age, as he vanishes
past
Too pressed for time to appreciate
My groomed
slender frame, my glass blue eyes
Gleaming all day from my
elevated place.
Sometimes,
under the harsh neon light, a woman
Stops before my
transparent cage, transfigured till
Closing time by my silks
and earrings.
I would like to erase that longing
In
her eyes—ornaments can be replaced;
But a vacant darkness
swarms
Within me too, and I cannot go beyond
This
fixed, fond smile.
Gifts - Moving Out - Personal Effects -Exotica - Peacock - Domestic Creatures - Stills from Baga Beach - The Old Printer - Recipe - Jackfruit -
The Hyenas - Fireflies - The Rat - Mannequin - Dialogue with a Child - Jigsaw
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