This poem was inspired by a trip to India in 2006. I have more traveller’s tales from 10 days in India than from all my other holidays put together.
Spring Sutra
‘Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.’
Robert Frost
This poem begins in Delhi
where you catch the train
surprised to see your name
chalked on the carriage door
glad to leave behind the heat
and all the noise of that vast
place and all that happens there
on pavements in the shadows cast
by billboards for a mobile phone
and chug past blue tarpaulin
shanties that stretch so far
out to the holy city of Pushkar
where you are beautifully fleeced
by a boy not yet in his teens
grateful for your innocence
in this the Rajasthani off season
where demobbed young Israelis
having long grown tired of his tricks
drink bhang lassis and talk politics
where sunrise brings the saris
gold and green and red
onto the roof tops
women in their bridal silver
cooking chapatis on open fires
burning the dung of sacred cows
that wander where they will down
streets where stalls
sell scarves and postcards
in colours too intense
to take back home
but here make perfect sense
a barber shop a place to eat
incense from the antique stores
pigs in the debris of an open drain
where nothing’s guaranteed
not crossing over roads
or riding in a rickshaw
and forget about tomorrow
and then you start to follow
someone in a vision
down a track so narrow
you cannot lose your way
that’s just too tight to turn around
that heads straight out of town
into the desert where the people live
in unskimmed concrete shacks
but you keep going north
and pretty soon
peaks of Himalayan wonder
reach up like countless fingers
pointing up at countless moons
all pointing to the sun
where everything ascends
and this poem ends.
Sunday 26 May 2019