Sophocles and My Dadu and 2 other poems

I have neither met Sophocles

nor my grandfather

both met the same fate

Sophocles died reciting a monologue

from Antigone

and my Dadu ~ burst his vein singing a

funeral song in a Brahman’s house

quite like an untouchable nightingale

when it loses its voice

and all music pauses

and Sophocles is dead

and I? I have never known him

but I know as little of dadu

as I know of what Sophocles

smelled like…

Maybe my Ammañ had known,

but has she forgotten?

I am far from her to ask

Closer to Sophocles’ place of birth than hers We

are a world apart

Separated by a Visa

When you look, Mathematically

close enough,

You see a dysfunctional fountain,

Left to maintenance that lets it be there

for purely the reason that it once was

The salad garden and the tomato vines

grow unidirectionally

as if the gardeners whispered in

their ears, swiftly, softly

to obey a direction,

upward, upward, and then to

a rebellious left.

The bonsais outgrowing themselves

too big to be cute,

too less slender

and calculated in breadth,

A twin tomat-oo glaring

in disquiet, moving with

the hellish fury of the winds

from the north.

You fed me fish

You fed me such that no fish bones

slick my tongue

You fed me cornflake pistachios and kishmish swimming in lukewarm milk

Perfectly warm

such that no heat

burns my lips

You fed me imlee off of your veril And

I made the face of a six year old To

watch you laugh

You fed me the taste of a curry

off of your palm

to see if I want it saltier

like the sea ~ that you are

You fed me a poem for breakfast One

too many

And my belly was full of love

And sweet lovewords

You wrote

Perhaps when I went into a deep sleep

Under a blanket

That you put on me