Janet Naidu
Buckets (2005)
Quite early in the morning
we heard more than once,
words like leaves
leaping in the wind – Tamil, Telugu
Hindi and Urdu – other tongues too.
They come as music in the fields.
Then decades of separation increased.
We now yearn for a single moment
of that old friend in the field
who closed the distance between
our pain and fury with his sweet bhajans.
We search for him
near a narrow roadside;
There, a barrel full of rainwater –
To reclaim that body,
this miracle in buckets
showering my head with thunder –
This barrel, the only vessel
carrying my single desire
to return and discover
that shadow in the field,
his voice in the wind:
Ah who dah?
Ah me bhai, Darshan