A mountain pine in the plains.

How did it come in this

unfrequented alley? How does it

survive so out of place?

It towers gawkily

above the rear of the building.

Walk past it every morning

to touch its toughness. Its needles

are dropping always. They are

the sponginess you tread.

A few are caught in the bark’s

rigid flakes. Gently

prise them out. Release them

to fall where they belong.

They cover dust and flatness

with the scent of resin slopes.

That arrival: a return.

The car with shut windows

had wound through a pine forest.

At last you stood on a ridge

in the blue forgotten air

through which the great trees

were a dry redolence.

It seemed that this was it:

belonging. Home was this.

But the pines kept murmuring

something else. You are

a guest wherever you are:

home is out of place.

9. Ol’ Man River

The flanks of the brown river

beneath the massed and shadowless clouds

fan out and slide into the shore.

Midstream the water is patchy

but looks immune as armoured cars

to being diverted by myths on the side.

The river is not an old man.

Nor has it ever been the Mother

no matter the evening pieties on show.

It is young blood obeying old commands

to just keep rollin’ along.

It bundles silt towards an ocean.

Tea 

He hugs his tumbler of tea.

It is the most precious thing.

He stands beneath a dripping tree

where those who still serve

have served him.

They are at their posts again.

He was here as usual early

and was given tea.

Now that his service is over why

does he exist?

Scuffed shoes and shapeless pants

that he has to pull up

full sleeves almost empty

with bones. But his tumbler

has just been filled.

Teens On Shravan Monday 

So many of them barefoot and merry

striding through the unholy muck

on the ghats at dawn.

It isn’t that the new dustbins have overflowed:

they are mere appendages

to a smart city whose time has been coming

since the inception of time.

More of the boys are in the murky water

splashing within red barriers

that keep them from colliding with boats

or being carried off.

Not that such things are to be feared:

the boats are slow

these waters can only drown misdeeds

and this is an auspicious month

with fasts to be observed

precociously. What of hunger? Nothing

requires smart phones to be given up.

Here is music and there are selfies

arms resting on shoulders

nineteen to the dozen strong.

The Bridge

The day begins with endings.

A message confirms the collapse

of an arched fantasy.

The news of a death belies

another fantastic event:

the union of man and woman.

One of them is weeping

along with a child who knows

as something covered in blankets

is stretchered out. The day

is hazy and began for you

at water’s edge. The boats

were tethered on sand. The bridge

was lit like a birthday cake.

Outsider 

Outsiders must learn this river’s code.

Today the sun will be shrouded

but the bare bodied men at water’s edge

know when it is time.

Nothing can stop their moment.

A conch. They raise water in their palms

and hail the rising they cannot see.

Their voices carry the day.

One of them is doing something expansive

with a cupped flame.

Their call makes light of sludgy steps.

It has gone up through tree and temple

to rouse once-forgiving streets.

This call you remember from story books

was raised in war against infidels.

Now it so inflames piety

outsiders must learn to lie low.

Screenshot: Red And Green

A convoy of military trucks

is coming up the country lane.

The caption says they are on a flag march

to keep the peace between warring tribes.

Hanging out of the drivers’ cabs are red flags.

Triangular red plates are fixed below one bonnet.

But the trucks are mostly dark green

almost black as if indelibly stained

by the shade of forests disappeared.

The tribes out in the open now

must fight each other to be first in line.

Here are trucks to keep the peace unstoppably.

The photo shows another green and red

unstoppable thing: resplendent

as it arches above that single file

is a gulmohar tree. Slightly out of focus

doing its thing exotically

until peace-keeping distends every road.

The Watchman

The watchman – that is to say the man

who mends watches –

does not look the part.

He looks to be the problem when times are awry.

He has a muscleman’s shoulders

a politician’s paunch

and a mafiosi’s slur of speech.

His cubbyhole must cramp his style.

He does not look you in the eye

and he is careless of his sparse hair.

But nothing is careless

in what his hands are upto.

Beneath the glass attached to his eye

his stubby fingers

are doing things to things you cannot see.

The drawer his stomach grazes is half open

and he reaches in without looking

for the implement he needs

or for the bag of empty tags

to label watches with their people.

The pen has its place across the table

spares are in stacked boxes –

batteries, straps, protective glass, whatnot –

and alarm clocks line the shelves.

But no alarms

in this precisely congested space

that runs like the insides of a watch.

Things are kept as they should be

and here if anywhere

sits the boss of small things. In quiet

ready for you: he is the nub

when ticking needs to be set right.

Excerpted with permission from Lone Pine by Siddartha Menon published by Hachette India, 2025.