Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
There was nothing simple about it
even then --
an eleven-year-olds hunger
for the wet perfection
of the Alhambra, the musky torsos
of football stars, ancient Egypt and Jacques Cousteaus
heaving empires of the sea, bazaars in Mughal India, the sacred plunge
into a Cadburys Five Star bar, Kanchenjanga, kisses bluer
than the Adriatic, honeystain of sunlight
on temple wall, a moon-lathered Parthenon, draught of northern air
in Scottish castles. The child god craving
to pop a universe
into ones mouth.
Its back again
the lust
that is the deepest
I have known
celebrated by paperback romances
in station bookstalls, by poets in the dungeons
of Toledo, by bards crooning foreverness
and gut-thump on FM radio
in Bombay traffic jams
an undoing
an unmaking
raw
raw
a monsoonal ferocity
of need.