Nothing is allowed to hold its shape: the flame
that tries hard to be conical, the circular door
knob wishing to be a clock. Though my close
aide, the I-am-cylindrical bottle is tight lipped
about a molten pre-life, a recycled afterlife.
Don’t you know our voice wasn’t a voice at all,
but the primordial contours of a query about to
be asked? It lived in the holy caves of light
arriving from fading stars and shining on
passenger windows. We ascend the ghat road,
read a book that sways between the secret
shapes of essence. Watch tower, you blend
the fields in the city as if stubbles on a deserted
lover. Place, what do you do with an independence
that melts into a wound of partition, a democracy
that weans from warcry to whimper? Wind is the
shape of your journey. Wildfire, an industrial teeth
feasting on your green. Place, War and peace
exchange shapes in the house of your political
diplomacy. From Chaplin to Hitler, the toothbrush
moustache slides from glee to fear. Do you know
betrayal is a door that was once named trust?
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