After the War, to Shoot an Albatross

At that time,
we resided between words,
and their meanings,
sipping from one,
or the other, like eager
hatchlings receiving wet morsels.
Beauty meant the smell of tal
cum,
schoolyard tree meant
paper-ball hand-cricket in the shade,
wars meant spit-balls in history class,
and War veteran meant an old man we saw
each afternoon, sitting on a long-chair
in his porch, smoking, reading, the sun
glistening through his dog-tags.
He was not unusual to look at, though
more than one of us
thought of him in class,
when we read Hemingway.
Most afternoons were listlessness,
snoring, the shade of a Portia tree,
cigarette smoke, and us, wide-eyed
ruffians quietly spotting mangoes
in his front yard.
At times he got up, waved at us,
handing a bottle of cold water, and dozing
on that mythical chair. One afternoon,
we spotted a newspaper-tent on his crotch,
concealing, what we thought was wood,
though, it could be more torpidity
than desire. Something we still can’t name,
arose in the base of our spines.
We stood at eye-shot, taking aim,
waiting, waiting, waiting
for the newspaper to slide.
Was it Rudra, Phani, Jal, or
me, who lobbed the first stone?
We would never know. The stone missed!
Then another, and another,
which found the ashtray. It tripped
off the table, dislodging ash, butts,
burnt ends of so many boredoms.
He was awake now, wild-eyed, coming at us,
the newspaper still covering his midriff,
dog-tag dangling through white chest-hair

We never did glimpse
what lay beneath
the newspaper-tent. But in all future
retellings, we see whale, blow-fish,
sting-ray, the throbbing edge of melancholy
never far from our voice.