State Bank of India, Dharamsala,
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Out of the Hades fence of a low bank wicket
the queue gushes across the room
a ragged river of humans
a rapids a torrent serpentine rumbling
out of the cistern of existence
out of the headwater eyes of the clerk
through tinted glasses he glowers
like a border cop at us serving us slow as he can
with disdain behind his low wicket
us animals traumatized preverbal hungry
the torrent of us floods across the flimsy chairs
across benches eroding the delta
of the assistant manager’s desk
swelling pooling at the door a mouth of light
a mob of Himachali women
in thick mountain sweaters burst in
they grapple for a number
a Tibetan monk slips past them
smoothing his apparitional cassock
I stand neck-deep in the rapids
I’ve had no rupees for six weeks
have eaten only instant noodles
have not paid rent but it’s not so bad for me
some here walked a mile
on a broken leg to wade these rapids
some lost farms some will hang themselves
the torrent divides two worlds
makes a border between forests and cities
grotesque flowers grow out of it
family members leap in and out of it
some drown and their ghosts stand tacit
with their families on the banks of it
like an x-ray like a blurred daguerreotype
you can’t see through it
a boundary across which exists
another unpopulated world
while all around us the future tremors
its deaths its terrible survivals
mounds of paper like atavistic rotting cities
skirt the rapids a rat darts nervous
persecuted across the torrent under flickering lights
while above us ceiling fans churn the air
most here are lackeys scrawny farmhands
exchanging crumbled rupee notes for their bosses
with rancor the clerk hands them
the clean silent notes
out of his rage comes a stillness
with a flick of his thumb
he turns away the dirt poor
the tattered in sackcloths in ashes
they depart wordlessly out
into a cloud of mosquitoes
I have been standing in the heavy air
so long I could be sleepwalking
a warm monsoon dream
a sadness like the dark promise of some god
long before any of us were born
a little girl shoves her fingers
into her mouth choking laughing
her grandfather a shrunken old man
holds his thin shuddering wrists
shrinks into his tattered three-piece tweed suit
guards circle us chests pumped
tan pants tan berets tan sweaters
moustaches and one named Vijay
limps by us slow his shotgun muzzle
sweeps across us
hovers at my third eye
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