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Fingerprints of Rain

Sensual longing and fleeting beauty lead to a desolate, solitary search for vanished, impossible solace

May 15, 2025

(for Jeet Thayil and his ‘Book of Chocolate Saints’)

A tall, naked, salmon-pink butterfly
shivers in brazen moonlit air,
blazing with colourless silky smell of her carnivorous youth.
Her breasts are smeared with myrrh and cinnamon,
and thighs dotted with blossoms of silver.
As soon as I touch her
like a hermit cleanses his narcissistic soul—
ants begin to crawl across my bare sesame skin,
ravaged by rugged sins of civilization.

I perform a sacrifice at the edge of sunrise
a magic rite—
burning every desire in a bonfire of bougainvillea,
but the hunger returns the next morning
like powdered lacquer and she
runs away with caravans of wild-horned grasshoppers,
selling perfumes to poets and pilgrims.

Suddenly, a fire breaks out in the cloud-dusted sky.
all the cactus owls fly away—
I walk back again on the salt land,
searching for fading fingerprints of rain.

📖
PART OF A COLLECTION

Kolkata, Longing & Belonging and 4 other poems

View Full Collection →

Ashwani Kumar

Ashwani Kumar is a poet, political scientist, and professor whose work has been widely published, anthologized, and translated into several languages. His poetry collections include My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter, Banaras and Other Poems, and Map of Memories, and he is also the author of the acclaimed non-fiction work Community Warriors. He has edited major poetry anthologies, including Rivers Going Home, Scent of Rain, and River of Songs, co-founded the Indian Novels Collective, and edits the Hummingbirds Poetry Series in partnership with Red River. He was also a chief editor of Global Civil Society at the London School of Economics. He has held visiting appointments at leading international institutions, including Heidelberg University, the Korea Development Institute (KDI), and the German Development Institute (DIE). He also writes for publications such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, Financial Express, Outlook India, Scroll, and The Print. He lives in Mukteshwar and Mumbai.

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