By Siddhartha Menon
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.
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.
Siddhartha Menon is a poet and teacher. He has worked for more than 30 years in schools run by the Krishnamurti Foundation India and is currently based at The Valley School in Bengaluru. His poems have appeared in five collections and in journals including the Little Magazine, Nether, Almost Island and the Indian Quarterly. They are featured in the following anthologies: Both Sides of the Sky: Post-Independence Indian Poetry in English, These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry and Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing.
