Cities

The past is a city I've built up in the mind.
It is neither in the city out of whose grimy summer
I slipped out into the confused clamour of the world,
The city that I abandoned along with my childhood,
Nor in the city that grudgingly lets me walk its streets,
Looks askance at my outlandish shadow and mutters
Sullenly. Neither of these, but a shadow city of faces,
Of smells and private sorrows, of images disintegrating
Like old collonial bungalows in my head. And so
A rain-pungent afternoon in Bangalore becomes
the passage fare to paper boats plying on puddles
Collected in a street I no longer remember.
But I remember the puddles. And then,
The morning's newspaper launches images at me
Of yahweh's missiles imprinting their wrath
On uncomprehending children, and suddenly
I remember, through the dreams of vanished men,
The ships of the purple city, cedar scented swans
of the sea, that no longer glide up,
Phoinix like, from the living flame,
The unutterable terror of the four-pronged name.

cross-posted on Logos Incarnatus