A Voice in the Dark/Samaritan

These have been dreamless sights--
blank atrophies
that a fortnight brought
to bear
on the ends of untouched wood.

Luck doesn't motivate them.

But to know
is to feel
the abjection
of having colourless dreams
like dots in the middle
of the forehead.

The stigma
and personal outrage
of having legs
that don't move out
of billowy cotton covers--
toes too shy
to show the rough
archeology
of their exiled state--
all of it is real.

***

And then the koyal
sings in the middle
of a deserted night--
a Samaritan
sharpening his talents,
a man on a ledge
across this room
edifying the most
accursed minutes
and never too proud
to break his routine.
For a fortnight,
he has sung
and filled the air
out of the morbid innovations
of the dark.

***

He has been
a good friend.
So he must know
that
today,
my pencil
made unwanted shapes
on paper
because words are precious.
Words
are sinews
that bind this body
to itself.
But
of course,
he knows all of that.

***

There's no great
purpose in him
sending his voice out
like unbidden shapes
on a dark parchment.

He holds words
without meaning
and sends them
flying.

It's what I expect
to do
now
that the worst
of the ambush
is over
and I can hear him
as clearly as
the brightest notes
of the sun.

The morbid innovations
of the dark
get subdued
with his
silence.

I hear him.