ANJANA BASU
INDIAN SUMMER




When I returned, love was a dead season:
Between the two of us, we ploughed the bed
And made it hay.
I went digging while the brittle clouds blossomed,
Mined love with nails and orgasm for dynamite.
It showered petals through the springing summer
While the offshore rain caught fire, over the hay.
Clouds crapped rain sometime through the cattle fodder:
No harvest grew.
We ran out of dynamite at the end of three dark tunnels
And he took the wrong way.
My nails lost their edge
My pickaxes went into hay and clouds
The third tunnel flooded
And the grass was no longer ploughable.
I wrote my name on a cloud
And put an end to the business.